Greatest Game Changer in Insurance Agency Management You Need to Know

What do you feel like insurance agents need to do in terms of branding themselves, their agencies, the carriers they represent? When you are marketing something you're not in control of, you're not in control. The very last thing I do, I get agreement from them and then I end the call with making damn sure whatever I say I'm going to do gets done. How many hours did your team spend last week on the fossil reduce? Well comparisons, loss run extractions, now multiply that by what your producers cost per hour. That's the number that outmarket eliminates. The reason that I love a sin is they are the only vendor focused on helping agents automate all of their manual finances in accounting practices which is really the boring stuff but that's really where the rubber meets the road in terms of profitability to your agency. You know, we're going to write business with the carriers that make it easy for us to write business with. The conditions have to be right for you to succeed, your success is conditional. It's not real success. Play like champions man. We go. Insurance agents from around the world, welcome to the Insurance Gas Podcast powered by outmarket AI. My name is Scott Howell, your fearless host and leader. Insurance agency owner insurance specialist for our protect insurance and financial services based out of Huntsville, Alabama. And before we get started in today's episode, please help me welcome. He is a six foot three sophomore from Mobile, Alabama. Parade first team, all American rivals, five star recruit. He is a fantastic insurance agent and a great American. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and welcome my friend, Mr. Bradley Flowers. How are you Bradley? I'm very good. So I'm a little bit self conscious about this and I'm just running into the storm. So, you know, I was out on paternity leave for the whole month of June and I got a little bored. So I had to do something with my hands. So I have, you remember how you had me try the closet one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have started procuring and you're going to make fun of me. Procuring and roasting my own coffee beans. Seriously? And making my own coffee. Cool. And it would be my honor. I'm so embarrassed. It would be my honor if you the first person to try it. Please. Now you're being serious. You're like giving me something. It's not got X-Lock, Senator, anything. Okay. Let's just cheers. You're the first person to try. Laurel hadn't even had it. All right. Let's see. So I want you to be honest with me. I will. Smells delicious. Mm-hmm. Does? Yeah, it tastes fantastic. You laugh a lot. No, it tastes terrible. No, it doesn't. It tastes good. I like it. I really do. Why? What are you laughing about? I didn't make that. It tastes awful. Oh. Let the record show that Scott doesn't have a good palette for coffee. No, I think it tastes fine. I was just afraid it was going to be something like THC or something. You're giving me. Is it really your own coffee beans? Oh. So it's a Buffalo trace coffee. And I bought it. It's not bad. I bought it. And I tried one cake cup and I was like, this is the worst coffee I've ever had in my entire life. So I brought it up here and Cole has been getting into bourbon and he likes coffee. And I said, hey, I bought this Buffalo trace. It's like bourbon infused coffee. There's no alcohol in it there. I could tell you something. I was like, if you want to try this. So he, the other day, he tried it and he said, Bradley, this is the worst. This is the worst coffee I've ever had. It's got a little wine to it. I'll give you that. We have got to give this to Scott on the podcast. Well, you did. As a joke. You did. Anyway, it's got a little wine to it. It's got a different to it. I don't like it. It's not. But I'm not big on like flavored infused coffee. You know what I mean? Now, if you add the flavor after the coffee is made, but when it's infused at the bean level, it's not not a good, but Buffalo trace coffee is not the bourbon is a lot better. Public makes a pecan. Anyway, sorry to be that. Sorry to be that. Really good. Sorry to prank you. Those calls the idea of blaming on him. Thanks. Thanks, Cole. Thanks for, thanks for pranking me. Bradley, podcasts today will just you and I, which are most highly demanded podcasts that we ever do. Scott and Bradley sit in here. We chop it up. We have lots and lots and lots of things that we need to talk about today. You're just coming back from paternity leave. Yep. I have last time I'm ever going to do that. Well, maybe depending on how things go Wednesday. What if they get in there and they go, hey, listen, man, you're like this one in a million patients that we can't do this operation to. So sorry, but you're going to have to. We'll break the rubber bands out. We'll figure something out. We'll get some rubber bands. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, maybe I should live stream my bisectomy on the insurance guys. Well, well, on last weeks, listen, that is the best idea you've ever had, by the way. I think it was Michael McCormick that live posted his colonoscopy. Oh, yeah. So he's like posting on Facebook. It was hilarious video. No, just like words. Oh, they're doing this now. Oh, like it was so and he's got such a unique sense of humor. He does. It was very funny. That was a very funny. Bradley, you just last week on a podcast that we were doing, you said that the month of June while you were out was the best month of selling insurance that you guys have had most profitable month in the history of portal insurance. What is the secret sauce to your success? And by the way, you weren't here. So you can't say to you. You've got to miss the people. We made a change. I don't think we've talked about this on the podcast. Because the thing is you and I do this so much. I forget what I said, what I have. I do. So and you do it so much, it's almost like it blends in with real life where I'm like, I remember saying that. I just don't remember if it's on the air. So we made a change with our account managers. We have phenomenal account managers. This team we have right now is the best team I've ever had. Are you doing the account managers one thing, CSR is another thing or are you? Right now everybody's account man. Okay. We don't have any CSR's. The way I look at a CSR's are new to the agency. Anyway, it's the best team we ever had. Now we need more people. We're hiring for both awesome personal and commercial account managers. But it's something sort of clicked with me. End of last year beginning of this year where I was like, hey, let me just, let me just break it down this way. So I'm a big believer in merit based pay. You do well at your job. You make more money, right? Very easy for sales people. You sell this much. You get this. Sell this much. You get this, right? It's a little harder with CSR's, right? And from the beginning, I've always had my CSR's and account managers be commissioned mostly. Right. I've had some are along the way that maybe wanted a little bit higher salary so they didn't have commission, right? And selling is part of being a good account manager. Correct. Okay. Now there's a lot of account managers to argue with that. You're wrong because part of being a good account manager, you are managing the account. You notice the people don't have an umbrella or you notice we don't ensure the second home, etc. It's rounding out the account. So you may not be selling. It may be a service function, but that is in the selling category. And so we've always had a commission, you know, CSR's and account managers be commissioned. It sort of hit me when I think it was some kind of leadership team that said this beginning of this year, they were like, hey, look, here's, here's where we're kind of setting them up for failure because if an account manager comes into work and they need extra money, they can focus on selling. But for them to really sell enough that it makes a big difference on their paycheck, they're actually ignoring all the other things that make them a good account manager. Right. The flip side of that, somebody who's doing a fantastic job at managing accounts may not have time to sell. So they make less, so you've got this scenario where people who are doing the best job are hypothetically making less money, you know what you see when I'm getting that? Yeah. So we set out, I want to say in March or April of this year, I think it was March. We wanted to give our account managers KPIs that directly reflect what the goals are of the agency. And insurance agencies have two goals. Every other goal can be derived from one of these two goals, new business and retention. That's it. That's the two functions. Give me any other goal. Okay, EBITDA. Okay. That goes under both, right? Account rounding. You know, everything can be derived. At the end of the day, we're selling new business and we're retaining business, right? So what we did is we came up with four to five KPIs for each account manager that are interchangeable depending on their role. And we basically said, Hey, commissions going away, you are, we're going to, we're doing them. It's a monthly bonus. There's a bonus pool every month and the percentage of that bonus that you get is directly correlated with. the percentage of your KPI that you hit. So if you hit 60% of your KPI's, you get 60% of the bonus every month. Sales is part of that. Sales is one of the KPI's, the count rounding. And we're still tweaking it. It's not perfect. I think I'm gonna get rid of a few KPI's and have it just be like three and make the bonus possibly a little bit bigger. But then also in order for them to get the bonus, retention has to be at a certain point. So if retention is 89%, you're not getting the bonus. That makes sense? Sure. Retention is a huge part of that. It's called a retention gate, a bonus gate. In order to be eligible for the bonus, you have to do this. And then we also threw in a quarterly bonus on top of the monthly that is based on retention. So if retention is at 92%, every account manager gets $250 and for every two points above that, it's another $250 per account manager. The idea is I want everybody focusing on the same goal of new business and retention. Because I think it's easy sometimes for an account manager to view a customer leaving the agency as just a process, click, okay, done. Versus like digging a little deeper at the very least figuring out why that customer left. Not to mention trying to save the account. And so I think that's definitely part of it is everybody kind of being aligned and focusing on this one thing. And the thing I love about the bonus versus the commission is it encompasses the whole job, not just one part of the job. So if I had to say anything outside of fantastic people, fantastic leadership team that held the fort down, Kenneth and Megan really stepped up Natasha to, but Kenneth and Megan were, I mean, just, they were my eyes and ears. I think it would be that, you know, do making that change. - I'll tell you what I did. I have politely asked, I've prayed, I've screamed, I've yelled, I've cussed, I have done every possible thing I could think of to get my people to account round and cross sell. Because 28% of our home and auto business at I protect insurance was mono line, okay. Now for you younger agents, listen to this right now. This is something that State Farm has known and has been part of their playbook and tattooed across their shoulder blades for since they've been around. They have State Farm has always done known and preached and done the very best job in our industry of realizing that the more policies and individual has with your agency, the longer they are going to stay with your agency. Now we're talking about retention, right? If you only have, you younger agents, if you only have one policy in your agency, okay. Doesn't matter, auto, home, renters, but they've only got one policy. Your retention on that, and I'm being very generous, might be two years, okay. Might be, but probably only gonna be a year. But might be two years. If you have four or five policies with that client, let's say they've got a home and an auto and a life insurance policy and an umbrella and RV and a boat and you're probably looking at a seven, eight, nine year retention ratio. And that is where the money is made in insurance, not on the new business. The money made in any business is customer lifetime value. Correct. But I have prayed and I have asked and I have begged and I have pleaded. I went out and hired me a personal lines agent who has five years of experience with AAA and I said, you know what you're gonna do? And I double dog dare a damn, an insurance agent in my office to say one damn word to me about it. Count round. Yep. And that's all he's doing. Yeah. What's the strategy? Just call him and say, hey, your name came across my desk. He's got a couple of scripts that we've gone over and over and over that he has really over the past month, dialed in and not what you just said, but kind of that, hey, you know, you had your business with our agency. We noticed we didn't, you didn't have your home or your auto, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can see the numbers start going down relative to the 28%, 27%, 26%, cancellation rate. Yep. And so that's been a big thing in the past month and a half in my agency is we're going to account round because if we don't, your retention ratio is always going to be not great. If you don't have that in your agency. Yeah. Now it may be a little different down here because all y'all sell them the same damn thing. Not necessarily. Now we've had the same problem. And so this is what we've come up with. This is a new thing. When I say new thing, I mean Thursday, we implemented this. So Megan, who is our service manager, came to me, she's like, look, you know, we've been pushing the cross sales and we do a lot of cross sales. That's like our, that's been our number one source of new business last two years. She said, they're asking. She said, I know they're asking. I hear them asking because her team's kind of around her. Here's the problem. And we are short staffs in the service department. They are so busy on the service side. They have the time to ask, but they don't have the time to actually do it. So what we came up with is, so we have an inside sales team that's not commissioned. They are bonus based on how many policies they write. They're working their way up to being producers. When you're given a flat bonus versus commission, it opens up the versatility of what you can do. So what we did is we basically said, okay, account managers, you bring up the cross sale in the service conversation and then pass it off to inside sales. Now, because account manager is bonus, not commissioned. Inside sales is bonus, not commission. They can bring up the conversation, which honestly is the most valuable part. You're closing, bringing it up and closing it are the two most valuable parts in the sales transaction, right? So they bring it up, pass it off to inside sales. Inside sales quotes and closes it. Both are able to get credit. Now, what if it's a producer account, not a house account? Same deal. So, it's a producer's account. Account manager brings it up, passes it to inside sales. Inside sales gets credit towards their bonus. Account manager gets credit towards their bonus. Producer gets the commission. So we're able to do all three. - Wow. - And the math works out. Now, this is new. What I mean, literally, this is today is the third day. - But that producer is not getting their typical commission split on that. If we're having to bonus the other two. - It wouldn't be the same as yet. But it's the way we track it for those of you wondering. So for each account manager, we have a lead source that is Sally Crawl sale. So the way that we do that is when the lead is assigned to the, if it's a house account, when it's assigned to the inside sales, - What do you consider a house account? - Something that doesn't have a producer on it that works here. So like, it could be something I wrote. It could be something somebody wrote that no longer works here. It could be an account we acquired. - What if, let's say, through your website, somebody fills out an online form and sends it in here and it goes to, you know, should you have a waitress. - That goes to inside sales and that's a house account, but it goes to inside sales. - Wow. - Say, I pay all my producers. If they write a new business, they get commission on it. But you're telling me that unless the producer goes out, kills it, brings it in. - Which is the definition of a producer. - Well, then I don't have any producers. - So I have all inside. - Some people blur those lines. - Yeah. - So what about like a mortgage lender here in town that you've built a relationship, they're sending you all business. Producer writes that they don't get paid commission on that. - It depends. - Wow. - Now let me back up. Now if the lead gets sent directly to the producer, so like if it's, let's say it's a mortgage lender relationship that the agency has, but that mortgage lender refers directly to a producer, that's not a house account. It's going directly, if it goes directly to that producer. - Yeah, but you must be making up for that in salary or something or they wouldn't be working here. - For sure. - Yeah. - Absolutely. - You know what I'm saying? - Absolutely. - They'd be making a Snickers bar and a pack of crackers. - But it's, that's like if you look at any big agency, the producer, it's the definition of a producer, they produce it. The reason we made that change is we get a lot of online leads and they were not able to get to all of them. And I'm like, okay, well if you're not able to get to all of them, we're not writing them anyway. So the inside sales team gets those, but back to what I was saying. So the account manager brings up the cross-seal, assigns it to inside sales as the producer and puts Sally cross-seal as the lead source. That way we can track both. The way we do it if the producers involved is they assign it to the producer, put the inside sales person as the CSR in agency zoom and then their name cross-seal. So that's the way we're able to track all of that just to make sure they get credit. But that's something new we've done to see 'cause it's like-- - Like for a week. - Yeah 'cause like more than half the battle is bringing up the conversation. And so the next phase that we're probably gonna do at some point is basically tell the account managers like, hey, in every single service conversation you have unless it's like a claim or something's really bad, wrong. - Yeah, yeah. - You bring up that crop. There's some kind of line of business they don't have that you can bring up. and track it that way. And basically say, hey, like, you gotta have 90% of your conversations, you have to bring up a cross-sell. And so, that's been a struggle for us, man, because we've always had a big monologue book. Now, we've whittled it down, you know? But, you know, we've got, man, I think at the beginning of this year, we had like 2800 monologue accounts out of 7,000 accounts. - Yeah, but that was because, that was because you guys get a lot of mortgage, lender, referral, and that you're trying to write the home. - It was that. It's three things. It's that. - Yep. - It is the nature of where we are in the state. - Yeah. - Because none of my home carriers write auto, none of my auto carriers write home. - Right. - And it was the agencies we've acquired. - We're the same way. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Which again, I look at that as a good thing. Like it's a huge opportunity. - Yeah. - You know, if you just do the math, you know, our average close rate 60% on a cross sell. - Damn. - If you 2800 accounts, times 60%, times the average auto premium, it's a lot of premium. - Well, that's where you pick up a lot of lift from those agencies you bought. - 100%. - You said earlier, like the last couple of years, we've made most of ours off cross sell, it's probably cross selling those books. - 100%. - That were just a monologue at, you know, this and now they're. - It's that. - And it's, I'll tell you where we have made up a huge, like I were part of that profitable month. And we're ahead of schedule this year, EBITDA-wise. And for any of my people listening to this, Bradley's not Scrooge McDuck in it. All that money's going back into business is some book rolls. - He's making the assumption. I never mind. I was gonna say my people, I can say whatever I want to. You know, remember the time I did the 250, if you bring it up and nobody brought it up. - Yeah. - And the people isn't doing it. So we've strategically bookrolled to some carriers that pay more. We also have negotiated with a lot of our carriers on higher commissions. The market is soft enough that you can do that. So we've got one carrier in particular, there's gonna be a $70,000 commission lift this year versus last year just on that one carrier's book. - Wow. - Now, most of the business that's through that carrier was written by a producer. So a certain percentage of that's going to the producers, which is nothing makes me happier. But there's opportunities like that. And that's really, I think, when you get to a certain point, Scott, and you know this, you were doing this way before me, when you get to a certain point, there's little things you can tweak without really changing your business model that get more blood out of the turnip. Things like moving your finance in over to a send, which does two things. You're more efficient. And then also a send has the take rate feature in most states where I get a percentage of the APR on what's finance. So I think that's kind of, me and Carrie have done a lot of that in the last six months of looking like, okay, what are some levers we can pull within the business to generate more revenue? Hey guys, it's Bradley here. I wanted to talk to you. They really quick about a send. A send is different because they're the only vendor focused on helping agencies automate all of their manual finance and accounting practices on the agency bill side. They make agency bill feel like direct bill, which is like music to my ears in an agency that operates in an E and S world. They collect and send the payments automatically to carriers on direct bill. It'll even help agencies fetch commission statements, reconcile fixed discrepancies, post statements back into the AMS like with vendors like Verta4 and applied, help agencies close their book faster, IE, you and your people get paid faster. It's basically like all of your carriers download commissions, even if they don't download commissions. And we all know a lot of them don't do that. They're changing the game for agencies focused on efficiency because it's the one place for accounting and service to get full visibility and moving money in and out of the agency, taking a bunch of the manual work away. They're also rolling out some really nice, unique features powered by AI that help agencies be efficient like manually creating or automatically creating invoices from carrier quote docs using it to suggest matches when you're reconciling commissions where policy data does an align perfectly between your AMS and your statements. There's a lot of really cool things that a send is doing. And guys, I was a user of a send first before we ever decided to partner with them on the podcast. I highly recommend everybody out there. Check out a send, hit your wagon to them. They're going places really smart folks. Over there, check them out at useacend.com. Tell them that the insurance guys podcast sent you. Thanks. I'll tell you one thing that you've always had that I've always been jealous of you having 800 kids. No, that's one. No, having an agency manager, like a true agency manager that runs your agency. Like I've never had that. I've never had that person-- Yeah. Between Kenneth and Megan. Yeah, Kenneth is more on the operations/text/hr process side. And then Megan's more on the actual insurance side. But between those two, man, and Natasha does a great job as well, she's sort of her role's changing a little bit. But I kind of feel like you have to get a guy like Kenneth that's not involved in the day-to-day sales or service. Because you can easily get bogged down in that stuff. Like Kaylyn Weston in my agency-- no chance she'll listen to this. But she would be a phenomenal agency manager. But she just-- From a time standpoint, she just doesn't have time to do that and be a senior level commercial, you know, account manager. She just can't do that. Yeah, I think it's important at a certain point to have that person that's kind of a second set of eyes and their skill set is the opposite of what yours is. And they need to be operations driven. Yeah. Kenneth and I have actually thrown-- because we have Mind Your Agency with Kenneth. We've actually thrown the idea out of adding an additional product offering with Mind Your Agency that's basically Kenneth as a fractional COO for agencies to basically say, hey, Kenneth's only going to work with five agencies. Right. And it's got to be within a certain whatever. Because the issue we've ran into-- That's a fantastic-- And then for somebody that needs that-- Hey, that's a fantastic idea. The issue we've ran into with Mind Your Agency is we've had agencies reach out to us and say, hey, I want you to build us a custom internet. We're like, OK, cool. And then like, OK, we'll send us your SOP. So we don't have any. They're like Scott. They don't have any. So we've-- We've thought about going one of three areas with that. One is licensing portals SOPs, which isn't going to work, because it's so custom built towards ENS and Coastal. Two was doing a course, teaching people how to build the internet on their own, and a low cost, which we did do. It's still out there. And then three was just, hey, let's go the fractional route for the people that are like, hey, we know we have this problem. We want to spend money to solve it and sort of do that. Pimp Kenneth out, so to speak. That'll be the title of the episode. Pimp Kenneth out. We solved about doing that. And I had no intention of bringing-- So if anybody's listed this in your interest list-- No, I'm the one that brought it up, because I said, I've always been jealous of you having kind of an operations person that I don't have. If you're interested in that, reach out. You can reach out on the mind, or agency side, or you can reach out to me directly. I wonder how-- Testing the market to see-- How much time could he dedicate per agency still have enough time to see about what y'all are doing? I don't know. Have to ask him that question. I think if you kept the client size to five, which you'd have to charge a good bit for, be cheaper than what you could hire somebody at that role therefore, I think he could spend quite a bit of time. So here's the question of the day, and then we'll get off the spot. Other pieces too, once you have a really good COO, and they've really slayed that groundwork, you don't need them quite as much. Correct. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking it would be almost like a-- He's a fractional CFO for-- Well, part of this would be highly dependent on the size of the agency. For sure. You know what I'm saying? Like the bigger the agency, the more work is probably going to need to be done. Yeah, it's probably the ideal size would be like five employees to 15. Somewhere in that range. Cost wise would not be cheap, but it would be significantly less than it would be to hire somebody. And then you'd get all the mind your agency stuff for free. So here was my question of the day that I thought of on my way down here yesterday. Are you ready? I am. I don't know what your opinion's going to be. I sent this to Bradley late yesterday afternoon, and I said, I want you to give this some thought. Every single industry in the United States of America, since COVID, has raised prices. Or if they haven't raised prices-- And I'm using stuff at the grocery store where they've cut the size of the box or the bag down. They're putting less of what they make in the bag, but they're charging the same price. And prices don't seem to be going down. We've been in an inflationary mode for a long time. And for the last couple of years, insurance was in a hard market and it was going up and everybody hated insurance and insurance is terrible. But now we're seeing in a lot of cases like a race to the bottom in insurance. And I got to thinking about this on the way down here and I thought, is gas and oil and insurance, the only two, let me qualify that, P and C insurance 'cause health insurance don't seem to be going down anytime soon. Gas and oil and P and C, property and casualty insurance, are those the last two vestiges of industries in the United States that are cyclical? There's the third one I left out, the airline industry. But the airline industry seems to be cyclical based on timing and buying a ticket. Here's the thing though, the insurance industry is cyclical. It's always gonna be cyclical. And I don't have any stats on this, but I would argue that, 'cause right now, where I'm located in the country, where I feel like at the softest of the soft market, rates are still higher today than they were in 2019. So I think it is cyclical. I think the chart's going up and down, but overall, it's like a stock chart. It's still gonna go correct. Yeah. The only thing I wouldn't agree with you on that about is commercial property. True. It is. I'm thinking through a personal order. I know. Yeah. We've actually got a regional carrier that's launching a commercial property that they're being very selective with who, like we're one of a few that you got, and I just cannot wait. It's gonna be a blood bath. We're gonna write so much business. Anyway. And they're paying 18% renewals. Damn. But yeah, you're right, but I still think overall, especially with building cost of construction, cars, if you look at car insurance, there's more, I knocked that mirror off my wife's car. The mirror itself costs $2,500. We found out a couple weeks ago, I needed a whole new door because the plate that's welded to the door, the mirror's attached to, is bent millimeters, that doors $4,500, $10,000. Or, you know what I mean? I don't know. I don't know that I totally agree in the sense that it's a race to the bottom in terms of rate, but it may very well be one of the last industries that is cyclical for sure. And at a pronounced where you can notice it. Like the price of milk is cyclical, but it's small, very, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Like insurance may be one of, insurance and oil may be two of the last industries that it's wild swings. Yeah, I mean, no, I think the more I think about it, the more I think you're right about home and auto. Home and auto seems to go up and down a little bit. But overall, if you look at it kind of like you look at a stock on the internet over the week versus day, versus year, versus five, versus 10 year, I think you're right. I think it does this. Yeah. And I think part of that reason that it continues to increase year over year is for things like what you just said about your car. Like the repair cost to repair a XYZ car continues to go up. But scares me, it really does scare me because insurance in certain states has gotten so politicized. And I've often said that the day the government gets involved in property and casualty, like they did in health insurance, I'm probably out. At that point, Bradley's a full-time podcaster. I'm probably going to go like full Andy for sale in just like yelling at everybody. And it's gotten so politicized. And I do think the state association and then Sure Packs are much stronger and have more leverage in PNC than they did health insurance. As health insurance is different because like, like I remember when I was at Alfin, I was selling life insurance. If I had to call somebody and tell them their house was not insurable, versus calling somebody and telling them their body is uninsurable, those are two completely, you know what I mean? Health insurance is more personal, but it's scary because also, we talked about this with Stacey Korsgaden, the solution in insurance to get your rates down is often the opposite of what the consumer thinks it is. So Thursday of last week, I did an interview with Nerd Wallet. So Nerd Wallet. - I found Nerd Wallet. - Yeah, they reached out to me through the big eye. They wanted an expert air quotes to talk about high-risk auto clients and what they could do to get their rates down. So anytime I get asked to do something like that media wise, it's great for SEO, so I do it. Now, Pro Tip to you guys listen, anytime you do any kind of media, even local media, always record on my side too. That way if that reporter takes your words out of context, you can be like, "No, this is what I said." But I did this interview with this guy and it wasn't necessarily about people who are like, you know, DUIs and like, you know, people who wreck cars all the time, but like maybe the business professional that got a.08 DUI, or gotten a couple of accents, Residentialized driver, you know, what could they do? And one of the things that I gave him as I said, look, a lot of times consumers think that, "Oh, my insurance rates are high, I'm gonna shot my insurance every six months and I'm gonna change every six months." And I would argue that the person who only changes every two years or so over time is gonna pay less than the person that swaps every six months to save two months because you're getting labeled as a shopper, right? What's another example? I'm gonna carry statement of them limits as the cheapest, right? Liability aside, when you go to another carrier, when you go to Safeco, what are they looking at? They're looking at what's the prior liability of the midst and how long they've been with that carrier. - And that bill, that's a knock against you if you got lent. - And this was like a financial guy in Errol, and I could see him call like, "Oh," and by the way, Safeco, and I didn't mention Y'all's name, but he was like, "Oh, interesting." Like, it's always the opposite. So that being said, when and if the government gets involved in PNC, they're just gonna screw it up really because they're gonna go, they're gonna do what, 'cause they're all trying to get reelected, they're gonna do what appeals to consumers, and 90% of the stuff that consumers think as a solution as it relates to insurance is gonna cause rates to go up. Bottom line. You know, and so, I don't know, it's just as scary. - Here's one for you agents out there that I've really dialed into the last couple of weeks because I'm the most expensive account managing that stuff. - That might be what gets me a run for office. - Oh shit, anyway. One thing I have found out, and I've always instinctively known this, and I think I knew it from my insurance textbooks and training that I've had over the years, but I have really noticed it the last three weeks. If you are in a household, and I'm talking all of these carriers like travelers, Liberty Mutual, all these auto carriers, and you have like four drivers and two cars, but they will stick it to your ass. These carriers do not like having fewer vehicles and more drivers in a household. Give me an example. My stepdaughter, Avery, moved out of our house and moved to an apartment in Madison last year. Well, it's time for her to be a big girl and get her own insurance. - Did she buy it from you? - Yes, okay. - So progressive. One of my CSRs, no, my new agent took her off my insurance policy, my auto policy, right? Took her car off my policy. Comes into my office last week and he goes, "Hey, I took Avery off policy, it took your premium down this much." I can't remember how much it was. And I looked at him and I said, "Have you lost your damn mind?" He goes, "What?" I said, "It should have been a lot more than that that it would have taken off my policy." He goes back and looks, he took her vehicle off my policy. He did not remove her from my household, so she still listed as a driver. Now there's this uneven match of drivers and I think it ended up saving me $700 a year to take her out of my household. What she needed to be taken out of my household. But I'm just telling all you agents out there, you need to get with your staff and you need to let them know, hey, when you take a vehicle off a policy, you might wanna check and make sure that somebody that's listed as a driver doesn't also need to be removed 'cause when you leave that 23 year old as a driver in your house, that's gonna be a problem. - Yeah, that account audit is very important. - Absolutely it is. - And that's like a good example of like, a good account manager man, there's this like matrix in their head of like, remember my buddy John Jay described it that way, I was like, you hit the nail on my head. There's a matrix in their head of like, they know if this happens, that triggers a chain of events of other stuff and it's hard to train that. Like I'll give you another one on the commercial side or E and S side even. Somebody wants cancel the policy. You cancel the policy. What else do you have to do? Can't still a premium finance agreement. You gotta cancel both. Just 'cause you cancel one doesn't mean. When we thought that happened before, where we can't see somebody's policy and the premium finance kept going no obviously they got their money - Right. - But there's like stuff like that that it's like, that's why it's so hard. Like my wife runs a state farm agency. She's very adamant. She does not hire people to experience. I really only want to hire people to experience. For me to hire you without experience, you have to be super motivated. And because it's like, it's so hard to teach that. - You know what I had about an 80 million dollar agent tell me one time. - What? - He looked me dead in my face. He said, "Skid, I'm gonna tell you about hiring people. If it's personal lines, hire experience. If it's commercial lines, don't hire experience." - I agree with that. I agree with that 100 million. - He was only about 80 million dollar agents. - I agree with that because on commercial, what really matters the most is understanding like business and understanding revenue and payroll and what an EIN is and all that kind of stuff. But on personal lines. - Being able to talk business with a business person, right? - Yeah, well because too, most of the time when commercial you're dealing with a lower volume of transactions. So you have time in between the conversation and the thing you said you're gonna deliver to figure out what the deal was. - Correct. - You know what I mean? I'll tell you what I did one time, dude. I was working at one of the, I'm not gonna say one of these companies I worked at, right? I called this customer to cross sell something and I'm just like going down the repertoire of products and I mentioned long-term care. I actually know what I've been interested in possibly buying some long-term care. We set an appointment like two days. So I spent that day and when he came in, learning everything I could about long-term care. - I have a damn. - But 20 minutes before he gets there, I tell my boss, I'm like, "Hey, I mentioned long-term care." This guy's, he's like, "Breadly, did you know you have to have a specific type of license to sell long-term care insurance?" So the boss ended up doing the appointment and we wrote the account actually, it got declined. But I think with commercial, you have time to like, let's, like, if you understand business, you can figure out how to fill in a call. I agree with that, I agree with that. But personalize is tough, man. Especially if you do volume, like man, we've had folks struggle here 'cause they come here and they're not used to the volume and volume exposes weaknesses. - They do, it does. - So we've gotten really, real, real, real with people on the front end with finding out what their actual experience level was. - Right. - You know, we've implemented an assessment that we created that's a long-form answer assessment with like insurance scenarios. And we tell them there's no right or wrong answer, we're gonna use this to train you. And it tells us like what they know, you know. - Have you not hired somebody after you took it? - They took it. - No, what I have had happen though was the next thing we implemented, this is for the person that we want to hire, but we are not sure if they're setting their ways or not. We do that and then we bring them in for a half day at job shadowing. Now I have to trust them, but we will bring them in for a half day at job shadowing where they shadow the person who's doing the job they're going to do. The majority of the folks, - That's strong dude. - The majority of the folks, we've, the first guy we did that with came in my office after he did it and he said, I can't do this. - Yeah. - I can't, so self-satisfying. And I'm like, hey dude, that's like, - Yeah. - I'd rather you tell me now, you quit your job, you got three kids, you come in and I'm like crap, I'm overpaying this person and they don't know how to work a Mac. - Can I ask a question? - Yeah, and then we got a roll out. - 'Cause I've never done job shadowing before. How do they job shadow? Do they literally sit in a chair in the corner of the office and just watch? How long do you make them do it? I have many hours, like two, three hours. - Two or three hours. - Four and a half hours. - A half a day, yeah. - And they can ask questions and stuff. - Yeah, I want the person that's doing to give the narrative. - Do your people push back to that a little bit? Like dude, I don't want some dude in my office for four and a half hours. - Um, no. Now, I mean, usually it's the attitude, I mean, they know that like, hey, if we hire this person, it could be good for us. - Yeah. - It's a good way, 'cause like, the job candidate that scares the crap out of me, the part of it. - Could they do it over Zoom? - Yeah. - Yeah. The job, the job candidate that scares the crap out of me the most is the person that's been at the same agency for 27 years. 'Cause somewhere around year eight, you get real set in your ways. - Mm-hmm. - And I want to make sure they're not a old dog that can't learn new tricks, you know? And the thing is, I mean, you gotta, you gotta be able to trust 'em. You know, if they're a competitor, you know, it gets kind of weird. But adding both of those two things have prevented me from making some hires that not gonna say we couldn't have worked it out but would not have been. 'Cause like, the thing is dude, it's like, the last thing I wanna do is hire somebody and it not work out. Like, I'd rather this not hire, I had to let somebody go last week, totally justifiable situation. And I'm like, I would have rather just not hired you. - Yeah. - You know, like, like, if we could have somehow figured that, and at the end of the day. - How long would they hear? - Uh, six months. - Okay, that's not terrible. - No, I mean, interviewing at competitors. - Were they good at what they did? - They sent interviewing competitors, was up front about it. I was out, as well as out. I told Kenneth first thing, I said okay. Now this is somebody I trust, not to steal clients, whatever. I said okay. This generally rule of thumb is, you're interviewing with a competitor, you're outta here. Right? I told Kenneth, okay, you guys see what, guess what we can do to keep 'em? What can we, you know, and I think the main gripe was DriveTime, which I can't do anything about. - Sure. - Too close to work remote. - What's DriveTime an hour? - I just depend on this, going across it, Bayway, just depend on this. - Oh, okay. - It's more traffic than DriveTime. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But, well then I found out this person was complaining to other people and telling other people that they were leaving. - Oh, about DriveTime or-- - No, telling other people that I don't like it here, I'm interviewing with competitors. - Oh, okay. - And that's the thing that's, okay. You gotta go. - Yeah. - I can't have you, I'm willing to work with you if you're not happy here. By all means, by God, if there's something, I'm not gonna prevent you from doing what's best for your family. But if you're gonna, you know, it's like they took a, you know, like doing that to current people who are happy on your way out the door is like-- - It's cancer. - It's, no, what you're doing is you're stopping at my house unannounced, you're asking if you can use my bathroom. And on your way out the door, you rub poo on my walls. - Right. - That's what you're doing. - Yeah. - And so at that point, I'm like, I just gotta get you out of here, you know. - Did they pick up shit and throw it when you told them or would you just like, hey, look, this isn't working, you're gonna need to go. - I'm gonna leave that unanswered, but I will tell you they did exactly what clog told me they would do. - Wow. - Yeah, all right, we gotta go. Next guest. - All right, well guys, as I end every episode, rewards come from action, not discussion. Get your ass out from buying that desk today. Go out into the big bad world, make money for your family, for your wife, for your husband, for your kids, college fund, and your parents and in-laws like mine that are struggling out there. Go make money for them. Write good business for the agencies that you represent and write good business for the carriers that you represent. Bradley Flowers, I love you. Thank you so much for listening to our show and we'll see you back here. - Real soon. - Thank you. - Thanks for listening to the Insurance Guys podcast. If you need to know more about me or you need to get in touch with Scott, you can always reach me at theinsuranceguyonline.com. Or email me at [email protected]. And if you need to get in touch with Mr. Bradley Flowers, go to portalinsurance.com or email him at [email protected]. - Guys, we love you. Thank you so much for listening to our show and being a part of our family. And we look forward to seeing you again next week on the next episode of the Insurance Guys podcast. Take care.