The Ryan Hanley Show - INS 002 - Death of the Insurance Salesman

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comNew players in the industry would have you believe the traditional independent insurance salesman, the agent, is dying a slow death by a thousand new pieces of technology. I'm not so sure. Get the resources here: https://ryanhanley.com/death-of-the-insurance-salesman/Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to another episode of the Ryan Hanley Show and this is an episode specifically for the insurance industry. So if you don't work in the insurance industry or you're just simply not interested in listening to a podcast about insurance industry related stuff, then this is not the episode for you. Just click back to an old episode and listen to another one of those gorgeous episodes again, or just wait for the next one to come out, which will be on Monday. That being said, today we dive into the dynamic between, or the disparity, excuse me, between what insurance consumers actually want and what insurance carrier

executives believe insurance consumers want. And a new study out by Velocity and Salesforce in partnership with Newsweek finds that there is a fairly large disparity. And I think it is systemic in the industry. And I think that it speaks in large part to the principal agent dilemma between carriers and agencies, independent agencies in particular, that we addressed in the very first insurance episode that we did, that's INS 001, which was a couple of weeks ago. So I think you're gonna like this episode, especially if you work in the insurance space, or if you just enjoy business dynamics. Um, there's lots of fun stuff. Thank you for listening. If you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't left a rating and

review on iTunes, my friends, it's just a great way to help more people find this show. Do it if you want. If you don't, I still love you for listening. Let's get to the episode. Thanks. Today, we're going to be talking about the title. Well, the title of this live stream is Death of the Insurance Salesman. And the purpose of that, it's really just a playoff, like death of a salesman. Although we certainly won't, it won't be as dire as that.

Because ultimately, just to kind of cut to the rub, I don't think the insurance salesperson, salespeople, I do not think in any way, shape or form that they are dead. I do not think that they are dying. I do not think in any way, shape, or form that they are dead. I do not think that they are dying. I do not think they're going away. I do think that what is happening is the transition away from the traditional ground and pound agent to a hybrid style agent, an agent that is both a marketer, a salesperson, a technologist. I think that I think you have to be all three at a minimum in order to be successful moving into

the future. Now, if any of you are watching this, and you've developed your business over the last 20-30 years, and you did it through very classic means, you may be saying, Ryan, I've heard this story a thousand times, and I'm still able to grow my business off of referrals. And I built it this way, and this works for us, and this is who we are. And this is just nonsense that keeps being run past me, but ultimately is not the reality that we live in. And my pushback to you would be if you have that point of view, or to anyone who has that point of view, and I've and I've shared this with people in many of the presentations that I've done at many different insurance organizations around the country is you could not do that today. So what I mean by that is,

yes, you have established a reputation in a community or an ecosystem in which people come to you. They're driven to you through referral partners, through current clients, through friends, through business associates, through just your reputation in a space that you've been in for a period of time. And what that allows you to do is disregard certain marketing, advertising, we'll say growth focused business tactics to continue to build your agency in your book or your book of business. Unfortunately, if you were to do take that same philosophy, and restart it today, the same philosophy that you that you used 2030 years ago, even even really 15 years ago, although it was starting to change at that point.

If you were to try to do that today, you wouldn't fail, That would not work. It would that it just it happens too slowly. There's too many people coming at your clients. It's so much harder to build a moat or a wall, whatever analogy you prefer around your client base today than it was 15, 20, 30 years ago. So I thought it was important to address this topic because I was passed a study that was done by Salesforce and let's see who else it was done by Salesforce, Velocity and Deloitte Digital in conjunction with Newsweek. And it was titled, Empowering Consumers and Agents, the New Basis of Insurance Competition. And what I found interesting about this study, and I'm going to have to apologize to whoever passed this study to me, I have completely forgotten who sent this to me. So if you're the person that sent this to

me, know that I appreciate it. And if you reach out to me, I will give you credit down the road for passing this study to me because I do think it's a very, very important piece of research and findings. And I just have been reviewing it and it's been weeks since it was given to me and I have completely forgotten who it was. So I do apologize for that. Okay. So in this study, in this study, 300 C-level insurance executives were surveyed and their perspectives were collected and kind of digested for the findings. And I'm just going to kind of cut into the chase. There's a lot of stuff here and we're going to go back through it, but what immediately jumped out to me, what immediately jumped out to me is actually on page, it's on like page 12 or 13, and it is a diagram. Now, if you go to, if you go to my website after this, this, the replay of this video will be there. I also have a screen grab of this, of this, the particular slide or

piece of the study that caught my attention that we're going to spend a lot of time talking about. I also have a link to this study there. If you just go to ryanhanley.com, it's like the top post. It's called death of an insurance salesman. And you can find all this information there. If you just go to ryanhanley.com, it's like the top post. It's called death of an insurance salesman. And you can find all this information there. I will also have it in the comments below if you're watching this at a later time. But basically, they line up in terms of importance, the lineup in terms of importance, when making when buying insurance products or services, what insurance buyers find important versus what insurance carrier executives feel is important today. And the, you know, there's, there's some obvious, there's, there's two obvious pieces that stand out. The first, if we're looking at executives, what carrier executives think is important during the buying experience of insurance products,

if you look at carrier executives, they ranked mobile apps as the most important aspect of the buying process today, of the insurance buying process. A mobile app was the most important item. That was second to last for insurance buyers. If you look at insurance buyers, the most important aspect for an insurance buyer in making a decision was a knowledgeable salesperson. And that was last for insurance carrier executives. Now, what's interesting is right below that, both insurance buyers and insurance carrier executives. We have to have real dialogue about this. And we have to do that in a way that people are allowed to share their opinion without ramifications beyond disagreement. Because ultimately, I think most of us are pulling our punches and not really speaking our truth on this topic, which I'm going to do today. And hopefully we can get some

conversation going. Here's the deal. And before we get there, let's just see. It sounds like audio is working. That's great. I see insurance nerds here. I, Mike Crowley's here, uh, you know, uh, uh, Judson Norton. Great guys. Leave your comments, leave your thoughts in the chat as we get going on this. Um, I'll be happy to answer those questions and, and, and call out some comments, call out some thoughts. Uh, Mike Crowley, all are already jumped in with, uh, because, because carriers don't have a clue.

I think that there's an intrinsic difference in the way that we're viewing the business. And this is a huge, huge issue. So let's dissect what this survey is providing with us. So insurance buyers are saying there needs to be a human in the process. Somewhere in the process, in order for me to make a decision, the thing that's the most important to me, it's not the only thing that's important. And I don't think what they're saying is that it always has to be part of it.

But I feel as an insurance buyer, it is very important to have, and ultimately the most important thing to be making this decision is having a knowledgeable salesperson at some point during the buying process to help me validate my decision on coverages, on carrier, on price, you know, on making sure that when I leave this transaction, I don't have to think about insurance anymore. Because that's, you know, if we take a step back and we think about what insurance consumers actually want, it's a one call

transaction. That's what they want. It's a one touch transaction. They want to engage with an insurance provider, be it an agent or a direct carrier or captive or a mobile app, whatever that situation is. They want to engage with that insurance provider, have one interaction, and walk away with an insurance program, a package of policies, or a single policy, an insurance program that they then don't have to think about anymore. That's what insurance, that's what the buyers want. That's what they've always wanted. And, you know, I think we have done everything we can over the years to make that single interaction transaction as difficult as possible. I think that's fair to say we have, we have been sluggish on technology. We've overindulged number of touch

points. We've forced, you know, fairly ambiguous rules onto different processes. We've created these walled gardens, whether it's agency management systems or it's carrier pricing in an effort to slow everything down so that we can control our data and build moats around our clients and ultimately just destroyed trust and respect and all the things that we ultimately want out of that buyer-insurance prior relationship. So despite all of that, insurance buyers are still saying that a knowledgeable salesperson is the most important part of the process. But the second most important thing, and I don't know what the differential is in how far like number one is from number two.

This is just ranked in order. The most important thing is a knowledgeable salesperson. The second most important thing to insurance buyers is a quick and easy checkout. That makes a lot of sense to me is I want this process to be easy. I want it to be as quick as possible. But at some point, give me a human in this process to say, you know what, you missed this thing. You have a 2017 BMW, and you don't you forgot to put comp and collision on it. Is that is that really the decision that you want to make? Or whatever,

right? You have a business that has lots of perishable goods, and you have a really low limit on your perishable goods coverage or whatever for restaurants, right? So you're missing something. Or the human comes in and says, you know what, I've had a chance to look over your policies. And here is a program that's going to work for you. You should feel fairly comfortable with this situation at this price moving on. Because the insurance customer, the insurance buyer never ever wants to have to think about that insurance program again until they either need to use it or renew it. They don't want to have to think about it ever again. So if we're forcing them to come back two, three, four, five times, that's degrading the trust, degrading respect,

and ultimately that insurance buyer's connection to the insurance provider, whether it's an agent or a direct relationship with a carrier. Okay. So now let's snap over to insurance executive, insurance carrier executives. So insurance carrier executives, 300 insurance carrier executives reported that the most important thing to them is a mobile app reported that the most important thing to them is a mobile app, that the most important thing to the insurance buying process is a mobile app. And I think, first of all, I'm kind of with Crowley in that this to me feels in large part because I think many executives in carriers are disconnected from the insurance consumer. There's a disconnect. There's a lot of layers of opinion between the carrier executives making the decisions and the buyer-agent, buyer-buying process interface.

There's a distance there there's there's there's iterations and layers between them that are not that where the carrier executives are not necessarily tapped in they're reading articles online they're listening to their to their marketing people their technology people and they're hearing things like agents aren't adapting, agents aren't doing business in a modern way. And they're saying, okay, well, if the agents aren't gonna adapt and we need to sustain our business for survival sake, we need to get things like mobile apps

because it's 2019, soon to be 2020. And don't people use apps for buying things? And, and I think that's the type of narrative that gets passed up the chain to executives by middle managers. I think I think that's, I think we're looking at a human behavioral psychology and survival instinct from middle managers inside of carriers, pushing these ideals up to executives saying, you know, hey, if we just had a mobile app, we could be faster and quicker and we'd have more control over what the agents do and say, and we'd get more consumer data and we'd own the experience. And those are good ideas. And taken in a vacuum, none of those ideas are intrinsically wrong.

But ultimately, I think what it shows is a lack of trust in agents, some of which is warranted agents, we have to own that some of which is not. And I think it also shows a disconnect between executive leadership and what's actually happening on the ground. And third, there's a piece there where I think middle managers, I think people looking to own certain aspects of either the customer experience or technology or what have you, people trying to keep their job in a carrier are pushing things like mobile apps up the chain as resources as a way to backstop against agents falling apart, dropping the ball, and not delivering. deliver in. Okay, so that is that is my core hypothesis. I see you guys have jumped on this. So let's, let's just run through some of the comments we have real quick before we go to the next step. So I see Ryan Keating's here. What's up, dude, Josh Lipstone, Landon's here. Tim Gould's here. Julie, it's awesome to see you guys. Josh says buying from an independent insurance agent is the most difficult way for a consumer to purchase insurance. I have to disagree with you, man. Like you have to define most difficult in that case. Like I can, I can,

I appreciate that opinion. I think if you're comparing buying something on Amazon to buying a home and auto policy from an independent agent, then that would feel difficult. That being said, I do not feel like it's the most difficult way to purchase insurance because it should be a guided experience. And really, if agents have even adopted the baseline of modern insurance technology, they should be able to one call close an auto or bop product, you really should like a Main Street bop product at a baseline going to Chubb, Hartford or Travelers Raider, throw that thing in, ask the questions, pump out a bop for them, that should be a one call 30 minute close for a business owner. And that process should be very easy. And that person has had a guided tour through choosing the

right products, services, additional coverages, deductibles, and then ultimately some ancillary products. Now, can you, you know, can you pump out a workers compensation quote and, and buying that, like on that call, maybe not, you know, maybe that part, there's some additional feedback, maybe got to reach out a couple carriers, maybe some, you know, professional liability, stuff like that. Although I know, RPS is doing some really good things where like in less than two minutes, you can have some some professional liabilities. I don't think that process is perfect yet by any means from any carrier. But I do know that there's some quality providers that are working on making that possible. I think as agents, I think there's this narrative that we're difficult to deal with. And that's what

I want to destroy. Like, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as difficult to deal with. And that's what I want to destroy. Like, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as difficult to deal with. Some of us are difficult, but we can we can adapt. And and and many times it's small course corrections. We're not talking about full pivots or tearing down the house and rebuilding it. We're talking about small course correction. So dude, as much as I love you, I would have to disagree that it's the most difficult way. I think anything I think it can be difficult, no doubt. But try dealing with someone who doesn't know what they're talking about at a call center, right, or trying to navigate an online self quote rater when you don't have a clue what half of the things mean, like, that to me, is not easy, because now you're just guessing at coverages you should need and stuff like that. So that would be my opinion there. All right, I see Joe Hollier's here, who I think I have a call with this afternoon. Quentin, Quentin asked a question. Really good. We got a great chat going here. So anyone who's watching this, make sure you check the chat as

it's going. Quentin asked why Josh thinks it's, they're difficult to deal business with. I'd say that, uh, let's see. Um, okay. Landon, uh, they're trying to determine why buyers, um, where buyers will be tomorrow, not what they want right now. The tech stinks. That's why consumers don't want it you know Landon I think I think that I could I could definitely appreciate that opinion to a certain extent that right now there really isn't a high quality like mobile app buying experience that works for insurance consumers um that being said you know Lemonade is a pretty decent app, like for whether you appreciate the way that they handle their business, if you think their business model works or doesn't work are different things. But their app is slick, it's fun, it comes with this

supposedly AI chatbot. And that's a pretty easy way. And I don't think that they're taking over the world. I mean, they're not. They're doing they're writing business. They seem it seems like they may eventually get to a viable business. We'll see. Last time I checked, they still weren't actually making money. So I don't think that the experience is so amazing that people are telling every one of their friends that rents and they're just being bombarded with new business. So I think the tech could be there. I think the issue is people don't want a insurance app. I think that's, I think, I just don't think that for quoting, for quoting purposes, I think that there's some, a lot of functionality with service, but the problem is a single carrier app, right? A single carrier app does not do me justice. If I have my, if I have my

auto with a different carrier or my personal umbrella with RLI, or I have a boat policy with progressive, uh, and my home is with travelers, right? Like there's, as that gets muddled and the true value of an independent insurance agency, which is I can, you know, you always want to try to package all the policies with the same carrier. If you can to make any type of, you know, mixed claims process easier. But ultimately, we can fit the pieces in place that suit that customer's needs. And when that happens, a single carrier app just doesn't do the trick, right? You're, you're oftentimes shoving people down a path that isn't going to work for them. So I think, and I almost think intrinsically consumers get that. But from a service perspective and from

like having your, you know, policy docs and information on an app, I think that has a lot of value. I think there's value there. I think it's tough to sell that value because people don't want to think about this stuff. They don't want to think about it. So that's my perspective there. Carriers want their insureds to care about what they purchased beyond the point of purchase. Insurance don't want to think about it again. I completely agree with you. I completely agree with you that I think what's happening here is, all right, to this particular point, I sent out a tweet the other day, and it was just something that like hit my head. And, you know, I've been thinking a lot about

what value, you know, now that I'm kind of reengaged with the insurance industry, which I'm very happy to be back, I guess. And I'm thinking about like, how do I I guess, I don't mean this to sound so self oriented. But like, I was just thinking about how do I add value back to the industry? Like I had a place, I feel like going back to that place, I'm not sure what value that is. I'm not sure what value I can bring to the industry or what, how do I add value to all of your lives? Like, what's the best way for me to do that? And I look at the industry and, you know, are in general, you know, outside of a couple outliers who pay seven figure salaries to CMOs, and even some of them don't do a tremendous job. Most of our insurance carriers do a horrifying job in their advertising. It is just vanilla and plain and boring and uninspired.

And I think what we forget is the brand work, the community work, the outreach, the messaging, the marketing, the advertising, the connections, the handshakes, the, all that stuff plays that happens before someone ever purchases a policy with you. All that stuff is just, or more important in setting the expectations and relationship that you're going to have when you do business with somebody. And I think what's happening is we're all waiting. We're waiting. Cause we're're because we're unsure of how to do it. And it takes vision and it takes trust and it takes balls to to to do that work before the person's ever a client. So what we do instead as an industry is we wait until someone becomes a client and then we start to engage with them. And then we start to try to build a relationship and provide a customer experience with them. And we're doing all this work after sale.

And not that that stuff isn't important. It is. But what we've forgotten about is that's the second half of the equation. The first half of the equation is all this stuff that happens before they ever do business with you. And that's why I think so few carriers and agencies alike, I think that's why there's this struggle to connect and really get your customers to care deeply about your business because we wait until they become a customer to invest in them. When in truth, and this is why I've always preached,

give value first, relentlessly give value first is because there's so much of that has to happen before they ever become a customer, right? So much of that work has to happen before they become a customer to set expectations, to build brand value, trust, respect, and then they become a customer. And now they're ready for that deeper relationship. Now they're ready for this whole side of what it means to be part of our company and our and our family or whatever, you know, however you brand yourself. And we just don't do that work. We just simply don't carriers definitely don't independent, independent carriers do not do that work in general, broad sweeping stroke, they don't.

And when you talk to a lot of execs in the independent agency space, what they say is, that's why we pay commissions to agents. I think that mentality has to die. We have to pay agents because agents do a tremendous job of retaining business in general. You know, even the really poor independent agencies retain business at a higher rate than many directs or captives. So, so they're that commission is not a marketing fee, right? So it's, I just, and I've pitched this and I've run up against brick walls and I understand why, but I think it's an old world mentality for an insurance carrier executive to say,

the commissions we pay agents are a marketing fee. It's not, it's a retention fee. It's an experience fee. It's a customer service fee. It's a relationship fee. It's the dynamic between your boots on the ground force, the most connected individuals to the customers and your organization. That's what that fee is for. And you need to take and allocate some of your budget. Doesn't have to be an enormous amount. I mean, to be honest, I don't even know what the right answer would be, it would probably be different for every carrier and take some of that money and go out into the market. You're not subverting agents by having a brand in the market space. I'm not telling you to spin up a direct model. I'm saying get customers and get insurance consumers to have an idea of who your brand is and what they're all about. And I think that answers that question, in my opinion. All right, so let me kind of further down this conversation. This is

really good stuff. I hope this add value to you guys to kind of dig into these comments and have commentary. Josh says, because of the reasons that Ryan is talking about, you call a direct company or captive agent, and they can do a proposal over the phone, sell you policies, and you're done. Josh, we can do that stuff, man. Most IAs take a long time to look at their companies and require that the client to come into the office, write the policy, and it applies to the majority of IAs, but not all. If you're still requiring that stuff, then you are making it difficult, and that is a problem. I hope that most agents these days understand that, that a relationship with a client is based on what that client wants, and not what they want. So if they want to text, let them text, you want to email

them email, if they want a phone, let them phone if they want to come in, let them come in. If they want you to come to their house and sit at their kitchen table at eight o'clock at night, go do that too. So, you know, it's kind of like the Bruce Lee philosophy of martial arts. No, no style is the best style. That's a, I'm paraphrasing there. Julie says, no one, literally no one has asked if we have an app. We do. And I can't say that it's a selling point. I would have to agree with you. Mike Crowley. That's why those agents are failing and the ones that create solutions and make it easier are succeeding

the consumer still wants the relationship could not agree more if anything you know and I was actually you know now that I'm starting to take consulting clients and I have a couple agencies that I'm starting to work with we are doubling into relationship

relationship messaging how do we get customers to start to think about these agencies as more than just, you know, transactional service providers, but real human beings that are there to help, right? That's what it's about, is you might not want to think about your insurance policy, but for one day a year when you have to renew it,

let me think about it for the other 364 days a year. Let our agency think about it. Here's the things that we're doing. Here's what that means. And it means something different for every agency. And sometimes, you know, you certainly don't, you certainly would like it if your insurance, if your customer thought about your agency more than one day a year, but you certainly don't want them thinking about their policies more than one day a year, because then that's a burden on them. It's not what they want out of the experience, just because it would be nice for you if they did, it doesn't mean that's what they want. So getting them to think about your

agency more is different than getting them to think about their policies more. And that's something that I'm working on with some of the some of the clients that I have. Let's see, Quinton said virtually all of those reasons are negated via available technology and process doing business in particular. Ryan is now articulating that. Okay. So I'm not completely full of it. Uh, let's see. Single carrier app comment is spot on. Uh, all right. I think you just found your place. You need to consult with carriers to get them to realize what the hell is going on. I'm going to hopefully be working with some carriers. We'll see as time goes on. That's definitely on my to-do list right now. I just have some agency clients. So,

all right, we're about 30 minutes into this live stream. And there's a couple more places that I want to go with this particular report. I want to talk through just a few more things. And hopefully if you guys have more questions, comments, drop them in, we'll keep going. Or just comments in general. It doesn't have to be about this particular issue, but if you want it to be, or just insurance sales in general, happy to do that. But let's keep going. Okay. So, and I highly encourage you to check out this report. Again, if you go to the website, you can find it there. I'll put a link in the comments below, um, that you can shoot out to the website, get, see the particular slide that caught my attention

and then, um, uh, dive into the report in general, you can you can download it. So one of the conclusions that came out of this, that the author of the study actually came up with was, and this is the first key conclusion, the traditional factors of price, product and claim service are no longer differentiators. Who's been saying that shit for like 10 years? Have any ever seen me do the triangle of death, right? Quality, price, ease of business, no longer differentiators. Price product and superior claim service are necessary, but not sufficient. I feel like someone was at one of my presentations. These are table stakes. I think I refer to it as the barrier to entry. Competitive advantage lies in delivering expected levels of customer experience and

improving the effectiveness of distribution channels. I don't know that I think that that's the proper conclusion from the first three sentences. So let's do that again. So the traditional factors of price, product, and claim service are no longer differentiators. True that, double true. Price, product, and superior claim service are necessary. Absolutely, right? You have to be good. You have to deliver a good price. You have to deliver a good product.

You have to be easy to do business with, okay? These are the barriers to entry. They're your token through the gate. They're table stakes. They're what get you in the game. If you're not doing these things, then you are losing and you're in and you are on the path to, you know, dissolve, you know, to blowing up to having it not work to all of a sudden, looking at, you know, two or three years of of losses, or, or, or, you know, watching your business recline or decline, um, recline doesn't make sense. It's not a, it's not an armchair, but, uh,

and all of a sudden you have to sell at a reduced multiple. Like that's not what you want. That's not what you would, even if you're not planning on being in the business for a long time, like, I feel like, I feel like if like one of the, I'm going to go side, side tangent here real quick. One of the arguments that I have gotten against many of the things that I've preached for a while now is that, well, you know, I'm 65 years old. I'm only going to be in the business for five more years. And you know, I can just make it to the end. Some version of that, I'm way paraphrasing it. No one has ever said it quite so direct, but that's basically what they say to me. Like, why would I do it? I got that. Because if you're looking to get out of this business in five years, you should be

maximizing your multiple. Like you should be doing everything you can to drive that EBITDA up as high as you possibly can so that you can ring that bell and cash that check, right? Get your spouse, the new seven series, buy the house in Florida or get the bigger house in Florida, go from the condo to the 4,000 square foot, you know, little McMansion down on some beautiful golf course. Like that's what you should be thinking about. Like it's crazy to me that we're going to coast into the finish line.

You do 30 years of work and then we're going to coast into the, into the finish line and take a reduced multiple. Like it's bananas. Okay. So tangent done back to what we're talking about here um price product and superior claims i refer to that as ease of business because i think claims and customer service and you know all of that is part of ease of business is from my personal opinion um so price product and superior claims service are necessary, not sufficient. They are table stakes. So then the author goes on to say competitive advantage lies and deliver expected levels of customer experience. Now, I think I get what they're

saying, like expected levels of customer experience, but versus what? And I don't actually think, I don't know what an expected levels mean and improving the effectiveness of distribution channels. So this is definitely coming from a carrier's, this is coming from a carrier's perspective. I think that, I think competitive advantage comes from your business having a purpose and delivering on that purpose. I do not think that competitive advantage comes from delivering expected levels of customer experience, because to me, that falls under the table stakes. Like that's not a, you literally just define customer experience as price product and claim service and how all those things, three things mash together is your customer experience. And then you've said, that's also your competitive advantage. It's not customer experience is, you know, in the, in the way that they are defining it here, it, it, it doesn't, you need to, um, people need to be able to connect with your business on a level deeper customer experience is a seven, 10 year old term that I think is no longer,

a, it's no longer enough to define what creates the competitive advantage in your business. I've actually had a few people on my podcast recently. Um, Jeff Fromm is one of them. Um, um, Maria Ross is another one. Um, even, um, um, Nancy Duarte is another one talking about this idea of purpose in your business. And Grant Botma, Grant Botma was just recently on and he's talking about his culture and all that and how it's a purpose driven organization. And I think it's allowing people to align with the purpose of your business. Now, like in Grant's case, I think it's something around the effect of like, shoot, I'm going to butcher it. Go listen to the episode. But it's the he uses the ideas of love and caring through financial services. And I'm

butchering that a little bit. So don't hold me to it a hundred percent. But what, what I'm saying is a good customer experience is no longer enough as well, right? It's not deep enough. It doesn't just getting slightly easier to do business with, or having a mobile app or a one click buy button on your website, like those are improved customer experiences and maybe an expected level of customer experience from an e-commerce standpoint. But it doesn't differentiate your business to provide you with a competitive advantage. I mean, one-click buy buttons online and insurance

have been around for a long time. And none of the businesses that have them would consider them to be competitive advances. I mean, travelers literally shut down their online quote to buy personal lines product like years ago. And so I just don't, I think that misses the mark. And I think it kind of shows that the disconnect between where, where carriers see what's happening, and what's actually happening on the streets, I think there's still this complete misunderstanding of what the 45 and under buyers of, of insurance products actually want out of the relationship with their with with, with, with the, the organizations

that they do business with. Um, uh, that's, that's my take on that. Um, so I think it further proves to me, like organizations have a purpose. People have a purpose. Like I used to say to people, like, I don't want to do business with you. Like my goal is not to do business with you. It's not to sell you something that isn't exactly in everything that you need, because my goal isn't to do business with you for one year. It's to do business with you for 30 years. Like that, my purpose, my goal was to make sure that when you have your worst day, when that awful day that day that you hope never happens, and I honestly hope never happens to you. But God forbid it does happen. Financially, you're okay. That's my goal. And I'm going to do

everything I can to get you there. And if you're not into that, then I'm not the right guy to do business with. Right. That's just, that's, and I would say that to people. And I, I had people say like, you know what? Like, that's not what I'm into. That was rare because I was a decent salesperson by that point. But like, that was my purpose. My purpose wasn't to sell more products.

My purpose wasn't even a charity, not that I have anything against charity, but that wasn't my purpose. My purpose was to make sure that families were put fine or financially, financially. Okay. So that if you're in a hospital or dealing with an injured loved one or a sick loved one or whatever, that when you, all the emotional crap that goes on with that moment, the financially you were like, you know what, we're going to be we're going to be okay with that. The car is going to get repaired, the house is going to be okay, the business is going to be put back together. You know, the kids college will be paid for if it's a life insurance thing,

God forbid, obviously. That was my purpose. And I think, and we all have that. I was not unique in that I had a purpose. And frankly, most of your purposes, probably some version of what I just said, you've said to your clients. My point in saying that to you is I was very, very, very, very clear with every customer. That was my purpose. And it's that type of messaging that was a competitive advantage to me because no one else said that certainly not. Few people said that the way that I said it to clients, and not many in my local area, I would assume, because that pitch when I really had a dial in with like 95 plus close rate, you know, like, who doesn't want to make sure that on their worst, like, if you've taken the time to, to

interact with me about insurance, who doesn't then want to make sure that when they have their worst day, they're financially taken care of, like, I can't stop a car from crossing the double yellow line and hitting you head on, I can't stop that from happening. But what I can make sure is that everyone in the car is financially taken care of that the car is financially taken care of. And then anything that happens to you down the road, in terms of, you know, replacing income, or God forbid, replacing that, you know, if it were a life insurance thing, long term care thing, personal injury protect, we max those things out, we make sure that those coverages in place. Okay, so that was my purpose. And what it did was it drew people in who appreciated that purpose. And they believed as I believed. And that's how we built this

incredibly strong. And that wasn't my original thought. That was passed to me by my father-in-law, Jim Murray. It was passed on to his son. He passed that on to his daughters who are my sister-in-law and my wife. And then we all passed it on to the other team members of that organization. And it was that belief that was our driving purpose. And that's why that business continues to be incredibly successful. You know, despite only doing moderate technology things that we do. So I feel like delivering expected levels of customer service is like a, is like a dry fart. Like it's, it's, it's not, it's not enough. It's not, that's not a competitive advantage. Um, that's just like catching up. That's just like sprinting a little bit to catch up with the pack. You're not actually separating yourself

like delivering on an expected customer's experience. So I just thought that that was a strange, a strange take given that, um, I thought that was a strange, a strange take, given that I thought that was a strange take, given what the rest of the findings in this study were. All right, let's see what some of the comments are. We're about 45 minutes in I got I got one more thing that I want to touch on real quick. And then we'll wrap up for the day. Let's see what people are saying. Landon said, I'm gonna push back a little bit. The number of times I hear you're the first person who's actually called me back and answered the phone is staggering.

If we can get everyone in the agency to give a quality experience to professional new businesses, we are different. Crowley says, this happens all the time. It is crazy. Landon said, if it is table stakes, but so many can't even service those. So I understand what you're saying. I just don't know that those are the type of competitors that you want to align with. Right?

So I can appreciate that there is a decent portion of our independent insurance agency brothers and sisters who are pretty, pretty terrible at their job. That's just I think we have to just say that like they're not responsive. They're nine to three years, they go play golf at one o'clock on Friday afternoons and turn everything off. They expect you to adhere to their, to the way they want to do business. And I just, if I were you guys, if I were, if I were at the Crowley insurance agency or landed, if I were at your insurance agency, whose name I always forget, I would not use those agencies as the bar for expected customer experience because those are really poor customer experiences. So I just wouldn't use that as the bar. That's my personal opinion. I am completely aware that there are a lot of a lot of people who provide poor service

in our industry. But if I were you Landon, or I were you, Mike, I would be comparing each other, I'd be comparing against each other, I'd be comparing against, you know, what some of the other people on this call or this video are doing, you know, Julie, Josh or, you know, who, you know, I'm just kind of scrolling through, but like, I would be looking at the other agencies that I know that are pushing and saying, how do I separate myself from them? Because they're going to be the agencies that are around. Not these agencies who don't call people back. I mean, those agencies aren't growing, they're dying, they're falling apart. And they're going to be gobbled up, most likely by some big conglomerate. And they're going to be chopped up and spit out. And those customers are going to be unhappy and looking for

new homes. And you guys are going to be the ones if you if you set yourself against a higher standard that are going to pick up that business and are going to be in a huge opportunity to, to rapidly grow your business. So, uh, that's, that's how I would answer that particular, um, that's how I would answer that particular question. Uh, so does anyone have any other questions, like specific questions, specific ideas that you'd like me to address. I, I feel like one, I feel like my throat is starting to get a little sore, and I don't have water within arm's reach. So I'm kind of getting ready to wrap up in that regard. But I do want to answer any questions anyone has. So if you have questions, type them in. If you have questions later on,

if you're watching this down the road, like not live, but in the future, leave any questions you have in the comments below. I get notified when you leave comments and I'll come in and answer them best I can or, or pull them forward and answer them on a future live stream. I really enjoy doing these. Um, if you're not subscribed to this channel, I hope you will. Uh, I love doing these live streams and they're awesome. And, um, if you subscribe and hit the little notification bell, you get notified when I go live, but also I'm pushing out video versions of the podcast, which people seem to really like.

And then I'm doing a lot of kind of one-off videos on topics that are interesting to me as well. I have, I have a, I have a whole vein of content coming out around this idea of action is the answer. And this is just what I'm going to wrap up today with. So there's this idea I've been thinking about for a long time. It's been a driving force in my own career. And I've really wanted to adjust, you know, I'd say partially it's, I want to improve the keynote presentation that I deliver to the marketplace. If I'm doing a full, you know, inspection of my own work,

if I'm reviewing it from 10,000 feet I think that it's very good it's very real raw honest I think that's why organizations have asked me back but I think there's a level of narrative that it misses and um and I love doing the kind of you know just plowing through all the different stuff that's going on in the industry I love doing the kind of, you know, just plowing through all the different stuff that's going on in the industry. I love those kind of almost like Gary V-esque style things where kind of I take the topics that are hottest in the space and just talk through them during keynotes. I think that's really cool. But there's this concept that I think, so one of the things that has bothered me, I've been doing a version of the keynote that I still do today, specific to the insurance industry for almost 10 years. And it basically outlines from easy, you know, from kind of one-on-one level to three-on-one level, you know, the various tactics

and, and, and ideas that we, that we need to, that we need to, that we can add into our business and our marketing and our marketing and our advertising and our experience. And that's had many different names. I kind of kind of left the final title has kind of crushed the customer experience. We'll say that it gets you, it gets you to and possibly beyond the table stakes level of customer experience that we've described today. And I've been given that presentation for, for some version of it. The versions 10 years ago were much different than the versions now. But there are pieces and ideas that have woven through almost a decade worth of giving that presentation. And a lot of people still aren't doing it. Like a lot of people, and many of you

on this call are are which is amazing. And it's why when I see you guys, it's awesome, because we get to have higher level conversations and talk through different ideas. And, and it's my favorite thing. But there are so many of our friends and our colleagues and our peers from all over the country that are really great agencies that are not adopting these things. And it bothers me that they're not because I want them to be successful. I think they want to be successful. I think they have it in them to be successful. They're not one of these dregs

that just wants to kind of coast into oblivion. They're someone, they really want to be successful, but they struggle to do the things necessary. And it often just comes back to a lack of action, to just, to a paralysis by analysis, a fear, a fear of being judged, a fear of making the wrong decision, a fear of overextending, a fear of saying the wrong thing. And I've had this idea in my head for a while. And I actually was working on it while I was still in metabolic and action is the answer. And I'm gonna have a lot, I shouldn't say a lot, but I'm going to have videos coming out

around that topic. How do we, what are the mental, what are the actual actions? What are the, what are the mindsets? What are the processes, strategies, hacks to taking action every day to move our businesses forward? Like action is the answer. You have to be doing something. Doing nothing is never the right thing. And at least that's my hypothesis. That's my, um, as I get into this, this concept, um, I have a man, I have a shit ton of notes in here. You can see, like, I've been interviewing different people on purpose and reading a ton. I just finished a tremendous book, Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday. And then another one, You Are What You Do by Ben Horowitz.

If you lead a team of any size, highly, highly recommend You Are What You Do by Ben Horowitz. Tremendous book. Absolutely tremendous book. I'm going to do some book notes on it. I have like three or four books I need to do book notes on still, but, uh, um, yeah, that was a really good one. And the whole concept is we have to be taking actions, actions, drive, drive results. We analyze our results. Those, that analysis allows us to iterate, take more action action and ultimately only by doing action can you either you know can you create the the can you create any type of results good

results bad results results that you're indifferent about that yields you some sort of response that you can that you can take in and and then course correct and course correct and course correct and and that's how we get to where we need to be and i think a lot of people get caught in that that you can take in and then course correct and course correct and course correct. And that's how we get to where we need to be. And I think a lot of people get caught in the, I'm not sure what to do next. I'm not sure what blog post to write. I'm not sure what tool to use. I'm not sure who to talk to.

I'm not sure, I'm not sure, I'm not sure. And there's a lot of underlying psychology behind that. And there's a lot of just old misconceptions and there's some really awful and traditions in our industry that just keep us from taking the actions that move our businesses forward. So long story short, this is the idea that's kind of wedged it's wedged into my brain and and I'm working on that. So it's going to be a keynote.

It may even be a book who knows. We'll see. I don't, I can't tell my wife that though, because she'll kill me. And it is the core underlying piece of the consulting that I'm doing for agencies and hopefully some carriers. And, and that should be a lot of fun. And as I learn and, and learn new stuff, this is obviously where I'll share it. So, um, I appreciate you guys. Thank you for watching this. These are a lot of fun for me. Um, I'm kind of thinking through ideas on the fly as I go. So it's very helpful for me to work my own thoughts out.

You can probably see some of that. Um, as I, as I think through these various topics, uh, if you enjoyed this video and it provided any value for you, I'd love for you to hit that like button, share it out into social media or with friends. And if you're not subscribed, subscribe, hit that little bell so you get notified.

That helps you get back to the video and all that other stuff helps other people find this video. If you have questions, comments, concerns, anything like that, that you don't wanna post publicly, ryan Ryan at Ryan Hanley.com is my email. And I love getting emails from you guys. I love you guys. I'm going to get out of here. Thank you. សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពី I'm out. Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not.

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