Are You Doing the Easy Things to Keep More Business

You've heard them repeated over and over again, yet for some reason, you can't bring yourself to take action.

Then, magically, you find time to finally give one a try and the craziest thing happens... It actually works.

How can you consistently cut through the noise and responsibly implement effective change?

Christopher Cook: Agency Owner at Alliance Insurance Solutions, talks about how he started to take the easy stuff seriously and the results it's generated.

Full Episode Transcript

Joey Giangola: Mr. Christopher Cook. How are you doing today, sir?

Christopher Cook: I'm great, Joey. Good to see you, man. It's been a while. How are you?

Joey Giangola: I'm doing good, Christopher. It has been a while, indeed. And since it's been a while, I've got ask something ridiculous before we really talk about anything serious. What's something small that bothers you, that really has no bearing on the universe, but you just can't seem to let it go?

Christopher Cook: Wow. That's a good question. You know, timeliness seems to be something that sticks in my craw about other people from time to time. As I've gotten a little bit older, I've realized that the world's not going to stop spinning because somebody calls at 10:01 and they said they'd call it 10:00, but it's taken me a little while to get used to that.

Joey Giangola: I mean, they say time is the most valuable asset we have. I'm sure that's probably true. For me, it's a little less, because that does impact you in some way, shape, or form in the grand scheme of things. I mean, a minute every day, if you did a lot of math, that would be a lot of minutes. But for me, it's just food sitting around. I hate when people order food and we just sort of casually act like it's not there. It's like, what are we doing here? We just spent money on this thing. It's not getting any better.

Christopher Cook: Yeah, it's not getting better sitting out.

Joey Giangola: Yeah. You're just kind of politely waiting, because nobody else seems to be in a rush. I guess that's maybe related to time. Well let's shift things over to what you do more seriously. What is going on in the agency? What is maybe nitpicking that's sort of eating at you that maybe isn't all that big of a deal, but you've been at this for awhile and it's like, "Boy, we really should maybe figure this out"?

Christopher Cook: I tend to focus on our team and responsiveness to clients, and then maybe carriers and quoting are the two things that kind of seem to stick in my craw, but I have this internal urge that I want customers answered immediately. And you have to kind of come to the realization that if a team member's on the phone with somebody else, they can't hang up with that person to pick up the other call. Sometimes that doesn't always suit my internal clock, but we're working through it.

Joey Giangola: I guess maybe what has been a solution? Has it just been, "Well, we'll get back to them when we get back to them," or maybe do we find other creative ways to maybe fake that responsiveness?

Christopher Cook: More staff has been one of those answers, clearer communication about when we can get back, adding communication channels, like text and things like that, to try to share the load. VAs have helped. We're combating that in multiple ways.

Joey Giangola: I remember from the conversations we've had over the years, you rely a lot on volume, right? You like to get a lot of people in through the door. Has any of that changed over the years? I know you wanted to shift, not away from it, but try to do more things to the same people. Is that something that has made its way onto the radar?

Christopher Cook: Surprisingly that has. Surprisingly for you, not surprisingly for me. That has changed quite a bit. Yeah. Our policy count per customer has continued to grow. Our retention has improved significantly since you and I've talked last. And those two things are specifically because we became more proactive about reaching out to our existing customers, rather than reactive. And then our revenue is coming two to one from the commercial line space rather than personal lines now. Commercial revenue typically is not going to be as volume oriented. They're larger five to $15,000 revenue accounts rather than a bunch of $500 personal lines accounts, so our type of volume's changing significantly as well.

Joey Giangola: What did you do to get there? Catch me up a little bit as to what were some of the big steps that got to that point? Yeah.

Christopher Cook: Yeah. I mean, from a personal lines standpoint regarding retention, our friend, Chris Paradiso, and I think he took this advice from Kelly Donahue. Kelly's popped into my email inbox right here right now so I can think about her name, but proactively calling every customer we have 60 days before renewal to check in. That sounds stupid. When I first heard Chris say that, I thought, "Golly, Chris, I can't do that. Why would you do that?" But as we've done it for about 16 months now, we've really transitioned the way we communicate with our clients. And it's a simple, "Hey, Joey, I'm calling to say thank you. And I want to make sure when you get your renewal offer that it's right. Have you put a new roof on your home? Have you guys added a swimming pool? Have you bought a new car and we don't know about it?" So those review calls on the personal line side have made a tremendous difference.

From a commercial line side, we have producers who want to go after commercial insurance, and that's where they spend their focus. They are networking, talking to prospecting commercial clients' coverages rather than personal lines, and that has been a big shift in what our agency has done to grow our book of business.

Joey Giangola: The 60-day renewal that obviously, I definitely love that. Has there been sort of an appreciation to that, maybe that you maybe weren't expecting? Because when they do get that renewal, now instead of being nervous about it, they're like, "Oh, all right. I got this, This is great. I talked to Christopher. It's fantastic."

Christopher Cook: Yeah. The first few months were hard. We went through that process slowly. Our service team was very used to answering the phone. It's still a phone, but for some reason they weren't used to making the buttons dial out, so at first it was just a call of a thank you. And now we're getting through that cycle of the customer getting that second phone call and expecting, "Oh, Alliance is going to call me and go over this." At first, customers were sort of like, "What are you calling me for? Nothing's wrong. Y'all only call when something's wrong." So we've had to change that thought process to, "Hey, we are going to call you. We are going to make sure everything's okay." So yeah, we're starting to see the fruits of our labor going into the second year here. It's really paying off. It's making the client interaction more enjoyable for both sides of that conversation.

Joey Giangola: You might've alluded to this, but I just want to make sure. Do you have people that are maybe even being proactive to your proactiveness now? Like you said, that expectation, if you don't get to them by a certain time, they're maybe poking you with an e-mail or something that says, "Hey, are we doing this," or?

Christopher Cook: I haven't seen that just yet much. I mean, yes, you'll see, of 7,000 customers, maybe we get two or three a month who do that, but I expect that that will start to happen more, yes. But we haven't seen a ton of it yet. I think we'll go through two or three cycles before we start to see that.

Joey Giangola: I'll take two or three, Christopher. That's pretty good. I mean, I'd be happy with that. On the commercial side of things though, you said you have producers that are focusing on that side of the business more. Is that something that they weren't open to before versus you saying, "Hey, why don't we take a look at this?" Did you have to go out and find people specifically to focus on that, or what did that look like?

Christopher Cook: Sure. I mean, I think that there's lots of factors that went into that. We took some time as an agency and defined our ideal client. And for us, that was more about what do our carrier partners write well? And then asking our producers to go after that. I'm pretty sure you've asked me multiple times in life, "Basically, are you a generalist agent?? And I would say to you now, our agency is still a generalist agency, but our individual producers have more of a focus of the type of things that they individually write, and that they individually go after.

And we complement each other as a team, as an agency, but we have a producer who has a very specific trade contractor niche that he goes after, and we have a producer who stays in the garage and automobile space, we have a producer who stays in the farm space, we have a health insurance producer. So those folks we've encouraged them to have niches and to complement one another at the agency level, but that focus and that concentration has been very, very important for their individual growth. And they've really adapted well to it and focused on it, and it's been successful and positive.

Joey Giangola: Yeah, because you mentioned focusing on what, one, the carriers you have do well. That's important, because you've got to have the markets first. But then at the same time, there's the second part of that is, well what do our guys have an aptitude or an interest in participating in, speaking the language. Was there a secondary part of that conversation of saying like, "These are the things that we have available to us that are good, where do we fit into that?"

Christopher Cook: Yeah. Each of them have sort of migrated the way that they enjoyed talking about, to your point, "Hey, I can speak this language. I'm a car guy," or, "I can speak this language. I understand that industry," or whatever. They sort of migrated there themselves. They've each fed off of each other, if you will, and noticed, "Hey, Chase is going after this specific niche. Seems like he's having success doing that. Where's my spot in the world going to be? What niche am I going to go after?" And they've kind of migrated towards that. I'm embarrassed to admit something simple that we've done also, is we just have a weekly sales meeting to talk about what we sold last week, what our prospects are this week, and what policies are renewing in eight weeks so that we can remind each other of the type of accounts we write. And as simple as that sounds to a lot of agency owners like myself, it has been tremendously effective in our growth.

Joey Giangola: All right, Christopher. So again, we haven't talked about all of these things, like you said, very simple, but yet highly effective. So renewal calling, focusing on specific lines of business, you just tossed in the sales meeting, these are all things that we hear over and over again. And at some level we say, "Yeah, that's a good idea." Or just sort of, "Eh, maybe I'll get to that." I guess the question here is, what's the next simple thing that we maybe are kind of constantly circling the drain with that you feel like might be, "Eh, it's about time. It sounds simple enough"? Is there something that is poking at the back of your brain?

Christopher Cook: Yeah. I think for us, the next step, and I hope that we get there by the fall, would be more around lead management. Currently, we, we have gotten better at managing an opportunity. Okay, customer A has said he wants to buy something from us, or at least wants to give us a chance to earn his business. And we've gotten pretty good in the last four or five months at managing that opportunity, understanding the workflow, "Hey, we've sent this to these four carriers, and it looks like carrier B is going to win the risk." And so we've gotten much better at that, and next step for our production team certainly will be, "Okay, well let's manage your pipeline. Let's manage who your leads are. Let's manage how they get to the point where they say, 'Yes, I'm ready to buy, or I'm at least ready to talk.'" And we're not doing that yet. I think we can pretty soon, and I think it will have a big impact too, but we're not there yet.

Joey Giangola: Fancy word, marketing qualified lead, Christopher. I like that. All right. Well, do you have any sort of framework? Is there anything that you are sort of having the rough planning stages of, of like, "Boy, it'd be great if we could do this to maybe get them there"?

Christopher Cook: Yeah, so we moved into the Salesforce environment in September of 2020, so I guess we're nine or 10 months in now. And as anybody will tell you, management system changes are very tough. Salesforce is a beast of a product. It can do a lot. And when I say we're just getting used to managing opportunities, sadly enough, we didn't really have that capability in prior management systems we had. The management systems managed policy data really well, but they didn't manage sales opportunities very well. And I know there's other products out there. For us, Salesforce is what works. Salesforce manages leads as well, and we're starting to understand and build out that framework and really work in that space. But Joey, we just had to get through, "All right, where's the box where I put the customer's name?" first. And then we moved towards, "All right, we manage the policy now," and now we've been managing opportunities so that we can drive sales, and the next step will be, "All right. How do we manage these leads?"

Joey Giangola: Something that's always fascinating too, is that being somebody that is driving this from the top down, it's not like what you weren't doing wasn't working, or what you were doing wasn't working. It just maybe wasn't working the way that you wanted it to. One, for other people in a similar position, how do you continue to have that ability to want to mix things up and be able to, like you said, communicate that down to people that are used to doing things a certain way?

Christopher Cook: Yeah. You know, I don't want to name drop too much, but I think it's important in this particular space, or this particular question. Read lots of books, thought about management of my business, management of my agency, searching for every single this or that management style, reading all the thought leaders in the country in the space, and so on and so forth, but really settled on a group called Focus 3. The leader of that organization is a man named Tim Kight. Tim happens to be very involved in your home state at Ohio State University.

But there's a saying that the focus three group uses is, "Just a little bit better today than I was yesterday. And I'll be a little bit better tomorrow than I am today." And I think that I've sort of lived that my entire life, but to hear it and see it written from that group was very impactful for us, and we've spread that throughout our culture. We've got some work to do to continue to spread that throughout our culture, but that leadership mindset and just behavioral training, or behavioral style mindset, that Focus 3 delivered to our group, certainly was very, very impactful, and I think will continue to be.

Joey Giangola: I guess I'm curious. What are the conversations that you had internally with some staff members that, again, like you said, that this is different, we're going to continue. I guess you guys have been doing it for a while or is this again, have you been doing this enough to where it's kind of expected? Like, "What's Christopher going to throw at us next?"

Christopher Cook: Yeah. I'm afraid it probably is expected, "Hey, he's going to change." You and I mostly met at conferences, right? So I'm traveling the country trying to get a little bit better all the time, and I come back with 7 million ideas, and they try to block and defend of, "Golly, what's he going to make me do next?" But we've settled in a little bit over the last, I'd call it two and a half years, and started to, "Okay, this is a goal that he wants done," he being Christopher, "but at least now he has an organization to it, or he has a plan for it." So we developed a strategic plan back in 2019. We update that strategic plan. We move things to priority. We focus on, what are we going to fix next? Retention took the lead back in March of 2020, and really hasn't lost its lead yet.

We're starting to get to the point where those retention calls, that I think if we get fully through this '20, '21 calendar year, we may move to a different number one priority. We are trying to get better at all sorts of things all the time, Joey. That has became the culture around here. But having a plan for those ideas and a schedule of when you implement those ideas via a strategic plan or whatever anyone else wants to call it, has certainly been helpful for my agency, because people know, "All right, that's important to him, and we're going to address it here." And it's not just a shotgun approach like I probably had my first 15 years in business.

Joey Giangola: Maybe you kind of touched upon this, but I want to get at it maybe a little more directly. Was there one thing that you could point to that maybe helped, for lack of a better term, cured the shiny object syndrome?

Christopher Cook: The most important things is probably the man that I consider our number two in the agency, our chief operating officer, having the guts to have an honest conversation with me to say, "Stop giving me all this crap. You can have ideas, but we can't implement them all." And I'm thankful that he had the trust in me that he could come to me and talk to me that way. And I'm thankful that I had the trust in him that I believed in him enough to say, "You know what, you're right. You can run this organization. I can be the idea guy, and you can be the implementer." And that has worked really well for us.

Joey Giangola: All right, Christopher. I've got three more questions for you, sir. The first one, very simply, what's one thing that you hope you never forget?

Christopher Cook: Family is more important than all of this. I carry a lot of different responsibilities in life. At the end of every day, I probably need to choose to say no to something, and yes to my family every single day.

Joey Giangola: Can't argue with that. All right. Now, on the other side of that, what's one thing you still have yet to learn?

Christopher Cook: How to say no. While I know I need to, it's very hard to do. It's very hard to do.

Joey Giangola: All right, Christopher. Last question to you, sir. If I were to hand you a magic wand of sorts to reshape, change, alter, speed up, really any part of insurance, what is that thing, where is it going, and what is it doing?

Christopher Cook: This answer is a little bit selfish, Joey, so it's not a focused on the industry as a whole, although I think it's applicable to the industry. There are some people who are trying to do it, and I think they're doing a good job, but our ability at Alliance Insurance Services to train a new and/or existing team member to be the person that they can be, and to be able to provide the service that our customers need, and to be able to grow in this career as quickly as they can, has got to improve.

We have some amazing team members who have been in the industry or with us for 15, 20 years, 10 years, and they're just amazing. But as the new generation comes along, I don't want to wait 20 years for a great service person or a great producer. How can I take that 20-year person and get somebody to that level in five or even three years? And that's something that for Alliance, we're trying to focus on, is there's got to be a more effective way to train people to be great in the insurance space. We've got a lot of great people here, and we want to have a lot more great people here. How do we help them get there?

Joey Giangola: Christopher, this has been fantastic. I'm going to leave it right there, sir.

Christopher Cook: Thanks, Joey.