--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of The Ryan Hanley Show. 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. A new study out by Velocity and Salesforce in partnership with Newsweek finds that there is a fairly large disparity. I think it is systemic in the industry. I think 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 INS001, which was a couple weeks ago.
--:-- I think you're going to like this episode, especially if you work in the insurance space or if you just enjoy business dynamics. 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 of this live stream: Death of the Insurance Salesman. The purpose of that is really just a play on Death of a Salesman. Although it certainly won't be as dire as that. To cut to the rub, I don't think the insurance salesperson, salespeople, in any way, shape, or form are dead. I do not think they are dying. I do not think they are going away. I do think 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, and a technologist. 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. I built it this way and this works for us and this is who we are. This is just nonsense that keeps being run past me, but ultimately is not the reality that we live in."
--:-- 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 shared this with people in many of the presentations that I've done at many different insurance organizations around the country, you could not do that today. 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 are 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. That allows you to disregard certain marketing, advertising, growth-focused business tactics to continue to build your agency or your book of business.
--:-- Unfortunately, if you were to take that same philosophy and restart it today, the same philosophy that you used 20, 30 years ago, 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 happens too slowly. There are too many people coming at your clients. It is so much harder to build a moat or a wall around your client base today than it was 15, 20, 30 years ago.
--:-- I thought it was important to address this topic because I was passed a study that was done by Salesforce, Velocity, and Deloitte Digital in conjunction with Newsweek. It was titled "Empowering Consumers and Agents: The New Basis of Insurance Competition." What I found interesting about this study, and I have to apologize to whoever passed this study to me, I have completely forgotten who sent this to me. So if you are the person that sent this to me, know that I appreciate it. 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 is a very, very important piece of research and findings. I have been reviewing it and it has been weeks since it was given to me and I have completely forgotten who it was. I do apologize for that.
--:-- In this study, 300 C-level insurance executives were surveyed and their perspectives were collected and digested for the findings. I am just going to cut to the chase. There is a lot of stuff here and we are going to go back through it. But what immediately jumped out to me is actually on page 12 or 13. It is a diagram. If you go to my website after this, the replay of this video will be there. I also have a screen grab of this particular slide or piece of study that caught my attention that we are 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 is the top post. It is called "Death of an Insurance Salesman." You can find all this information there. I will also have it in the comments below if you are watching this at a later time.
--:-- Basically, they line up in terms of importance when buying insurance products or services, what insurance buyers find important versus what insurance carrier executives feel is important today. There are two obvious pieces that stand out. The first, if we are looking at carrier executives, what they think is important during the buying experience of insurance products. Carrier executives ranked mobile apps as the most important aspect of the buying process today. 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. That was last for insurance carrier executives. What is interesting is right below that, both insurance buyers and insurance carrier executives ranked a quick and easy checkout as number two.
--:-- Here is the piece of this whole story that I find to be so tremendously interesting. This is the issue that we as an industry have to figure out. 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. Ultimately, I think most of us are pulling our punches and not really speaking our truth on this topic, which I am going to do today. Hopefully we can get some conversation going.
--:-- [Discussion continues]
--:-- I see insurance nerds here. I see Mike Crowley's here. Judson Norton, great. Guys, leave your comments, leave your thoughts in the chat as we get going on this. I will be happy to answer those questions and call out some comments, call out some thoughts.
--:-- Mike Crowley: Because carriers don't have a clue.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think there is an intrinsic difference in the way that we are viewing the business. This is a huge, huge issue. So let's dissect what this survey is providing us. 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 is the most important to me, it is not the only thing that is important. I don't think what they are 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, on making sure that when I leave this transaction, I don't have to think about insurance anymore.
--:-- If we take a step back and think about what insurance consumers actually want, it is a one-call transaction. That is what they want. It is 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 is what the buyers want. That is what they have always wanted.
--:-- I think we have done everything we can over the years to make that single interaction transaction as difficult as possible. I think that is fair to say. We have been sluggish on technology. We have overindulged number of touch points. We have forced fairly ambiguous rules onto different processes. We have created these walled gardens, whether it is agency management systems or carrier pricing, in an effort to slow everything down so that we can control our data and build moats around our clients. Ultimately, we have destroyed the trust and respect and all the things that we ultimately want out of that buyer-insurance provider relationship.
--:-- 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 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. 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 forgot to put comp and collision on it. Is that really the decision that you want to make?" Or, "You have a business that has lots of perishable goods and you have a really low limit on your perishable goods coverage." The human comes in and says, "I have had a chance to look over your policies and here is a program that is going to work for you. You should feel fairly comfortable with this situation at this price moving on."
--:-- 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. If we are forcing them to come back two, three, four, five times, that degrades the trust, degrades respect, and ultimately that insurance buyer connection to the insurance provider, whether it is an agent or a direct relationship with a carrier.
--:-- Now let's snap over to insurance carrier executives. Three hundred insurance carrier executives 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. I think, first of all, I am kind of with Crowley in that this feels in large part because many executives in carriers are disconnected from the insurance consumer. There is a disconnect. There are a lot of layers of opinion between the carrier executives making the decisions and the buyer-agent-buying process interface. There is a distance there. There are iterations and layers between them where the carrier executives are not necessarily tapped in. They are reading articles online. They are listening to their marketing people, their technology people. They are hearing things like, "Agents aren't adapting. Agents aren't doing business in a modern way." And they are saying, "Okay, well, if the agents aren't going to adapt, and we need to sustain our business for survival's sake, we need to get things like mobile apps because it's 2019, soon to be 2020. Don't people use apps for buying things?"
--:-- I think that is the type of narrative that gets passed up the chain to executives by middle managers. I think we are looking at human behavioral psychology and survival instinct from middle managers inside of carriers, pushing these ideals up to executives saying, "Hey, if we just had a mobile app, we could be faster and quicker. We would have more control over what the agents do and say. We would get more consumer data. We would own the experience." Those are good ideas. 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. I think it also shows a disconnect between executive leadership and what is actually happening on the ground. Third, there is a piece there where I think middle managers, people looking to own certain aspects of either the customer experience or technology, 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.
--:-- That is my core hypothesis. I see you guys have jumped on this. So let's run through some of the comments we have real quick before we go to the next step. 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 Lipstone: Buying from an independent insurance agent is the most difficult way for a consumer to purchase insurance.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have to disagree with you, man. You have to define "most difficult" in that case. If you are 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 is the most difficult way to purchase insurance because it should be a guided experience. If agents have even adopted the baseline of modern insurance technology, they should be able to one-call close an auto or BOP product. A main street BOP product at a baseline going to Chubb, Hartford, or Travelers, 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. That process should be very easy. That person has had a guided tour through choosing the products, services, additional coverages, deductibles, and then ultimately some ancillary products.
--:-- Now, can you pump out a workers' compensation quote and buy it on that call? Maybe not. Maybe there is some additional feedback. Maybe you have to reach out to a couple of carriers, maybe some professional liability. Although I know RPS is doing some really good things where in less than two minutes, you can have some professional liability. I don't think that process is perfect yet by any means from any carrier. But I do know that there are some quality providers that are working on making that possible.
--:-- I think as agents, there is this narrative that we are difficult to deal with. That is what I want to destroy. We need to stop thinking of ourselves as difficult to deal with. Some of us are difficult, but we can adapt. Many times it is small course corrections. We are not talking about full pivots or tearing down the house and rebuilding it. We are talking about small course corrections. So dude, as much as I love you, I would have to disagree that it is the most difficult way. I think anything can be difficult, no doubt. But try dealing with someone who doesn't know what they are talking about at a call center. Or try navigating an online self-quote rater when you don't have a clue what half of the things mean. That to me is not easy because now you are just guessing at coverages you should need.
--:-- Quentin: Why does Josh think it's difficult to deal business with?
--:-- Landon: They are trying to determine where buyers will be tomorrow, not what they want right now. The tech stinks. That's why consumers don't want it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Landon, I think I could definitely appreciate that opinion to a certain extent. Right now there really isn't a high quality mobile app buying experience that works for insurance consumers. That being said, Lemonade is a pretty decent app. Whether you appreciate the way that they handle their business, if you think their business model works or doesn't work, those are different things. But their app is slick. It's fun. It comes with this supposedly AI chatbot. That is a pretty easy way. I don't think that they are taking over the world. They are writing business. 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 the experience is so amazing that people are telling every one of their friends that rents and they are just being bombarded with new business.
--:-- I think the tech could be there. I think the issue is people don't want an insurance app. For quoting purposes, I think there is a lot of functionality with service, but the problem is a single carrier app. A single carrier app does not do me justice if I have my auto with a different carrier or my personal umbrella with RLI, or I have a boat policy with Progressive and my home is with Travelers. As that gets muddled, the true value of an independent insurance agency is that you always want to try to package all the policies with the same carrier if you can to make any type of mixed claims process easier. But ultimately we can fit the pieces in place that suit that customer's needs. When that happens, a single carrier app just doesn't do the trick. You are oftentimes shoving people down a path that isn't going to work for them. I think intrinsically consumers get that.
--:-- But from a service perspective and from having your policy docs and information on an app, I think that has a lot of value. I think it is tough to sell that value because people don't want to think about this stuff. They don't want to think about it.
--:-- Commenter: Carriers want their insureds to care about what they purchased beyond the point of purchase. Insurance buyers don't want to think about it again.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I completely agree with you. I sent out a tweet the other day and it was just something that hit my head. I have been thinking a lot about what value I can bring now that I am kind of re-engaged with the insurance industry, which I am very happy to be back. I was thinking about how do I add value back to the industry? I feel like I had a place. Going back to that place, I am not sure what value that is. What is the best way for me to add value to all of your lives?
--:-- I look at the industry. 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. I think what we forget is the brand work, the community work, the outreach, the messaging, the marketing, the advertising, the connections, the handshakes, all that stuff that happens before someone ever purchases a policy with you. All that stuff is just as or more important in setting the expectations and relationship that you are going to have when you do business with somebody.
--:-- I think what is happening is we are all waiting. We are waiting because we are unsure of how to do it. It takes vision and it takes trust and it takes balls to do that work before the person is 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. Then we start to try to build a relationship and provide a customer experience with them. We are doing all this work after sale. Not that that stuff isn't important, it is. But what we have forgotten about is that is 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.
--:-- That is why I think so few carriers and agencies alike 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. In truth, and this is why I have always preached to give value first, relentlessly give value first, is because so much of that has to happen before they ever become a customer. So much of that work has to happen before they become a customer to set expectations, to build brand value, trust, respect. Then they become a customer. Now they are ready for that deeper relationship. Now they are ready for this whole side of what it means to be part of our company and our family, however you brand yourself. We just don't do that work. Carriers definitely don't. Independent carriers do not do that work in general. Broad sweeping stroke, they don't.
--:-- 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 pay agents because agents do a tremendous job of retaining business in general. Even the really poor independent agencies retain business at a higher rate than many directs or captives. That commission is not a marketing fee. I have pitched this and I have run up against brick walls and I understand why, but I think it is an old world mentality for an insurance carrier executive to say the commissions we pay agents are a marketing fee. It is not. It is a retention fee. It is an experience fee. It is a customer service fee. It is a relationship fee. It is the dynamic between your boots on the ground force, the most connected individuals to the customers and your organization. That is what that fee is for.
--:-- You need to take and allocate some of your budget. It doesn't have to be an enormous amount. To be honest, I don't even know what the right answer would be. It would probably be different for every carrier. Take some of that money and go out into the market. You are not subverting agents by having a brand in the market space. I am not telling you to spin up a direct model. I am saying get customers and get insurance consumers to have an idea of who your brand is and what they are all about.
--:-- Josh Lipstone: 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Josh, we can do that stuff, man. Most IAs take a long time to look at their companies and require the client to come into the office, write the policy. It applies to the majority of IAs, but not all. If you are still requiring that stuff, then you are making it difficult, and that is a problem. I hope that most agents these days understand that a relationship with a client is based on what that client wants and not what they want. If they want to text, let them text. If they want to email, let them email. If they want to 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. It is kind of like the Bruce Lee philosophy of martial arts. No style is the best style. I am paraphrasing there.
--:-- Julie: 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I would have to agree with you.
--:-- Mike Crowley: That's why those agents are failing. The ones that create solutions that make it easier are succeeding. The consumer still wants the relationship.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Could not agree more. Now that I am starting to take consulting clients, and I have a couple agencies that I am starting to work with, we are doubling into relationship messaging. How do we get customers to start to think about these agencies as more than just transactional service providers, but real human beings that are there to help? That is what it is about. 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 are the things that we are doing. Here is what that means. It means something different for every agency.
--:-- You certainly would like it 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 is a burden on them. It is not what they want out of the experience. Just because it would be nice for you if they did doesn't mean that is what they want. Getting them to think about your agency more is different than getting them to think about their policies more. That is something that I am working on with some of the clients that I have.
--:-- Quentin: Virtually all of those reasons are negated via available technology and process doing business in particular. Ryan is now articulating that. Single carrier app comment is spot on. I think you just found your place. You need to consult with carriers to get them to realize what the hell is going on.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I am going to hopefully be working with some carriers. We will see as time goes on. That is definitely on my to-do list right now. I just have some agency clients.
--:-- We are about 30 minutes into this live stream. There are a couple more places that I want to go with this particular report. I want to talk through just a few more things. Hopefully, if you guys have more questions, comments, drop them in. We will 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.
--:-- I highly encourage you to check out this report. Again, if you go to the website, you can find it there. I will put a link in the comments below that you can shoot out to the website, see the particular slide that caught my attention, and then dive into the report in general. You can download it.
--:-- 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 has been saying that for like 10 years? Have you ever seen me do the triangle of death?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't know that I think that that's the proper conclusion from the first three sentences. So let's do that again. 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. 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're not doing these things, then you are losing and you are on the path to dissolve, to blowing up, to having it not work, to all of a sudden looking at two or three years of losses, or watching your business decline. And all of a sudden you have to sell at a reduced multiple. That's not what you want. Even if you're not planning on being in business for a long time.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm going to go on a 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, "Well, you know, I'm 65 years old. I'm only going to be in the business for five more years. 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. Why would I do it?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I got that. If you're looking to get out of this business in five years, you should be maximizing your multiple. 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. 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 McMansion down on some beautiful golf course. That's what you should be thinking about. 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 finish line and take a reduced multiple. It's bananas.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, tangent done. Back to what we're talking about here. Price, product, and superior claims. I refer to that as ease of business because I think claims and customer service and all of that is part of ease of business, from my personal opinion. So price, product, and superior claims service are necessary, not sufficient. They are table stakes.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Then the author goes on to say, "Competitive advantage lies in delivering expected levels of customer experience." Now, I think I get what they're saying, like expected levels of customer experience, but versus what? I don't know what "expected levels" mean. And "improving the effectiveness of distribution channel." This is definitely coming from a carrier's perspective.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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. You literally just defined customer experience as price, product, and claim service, and how all those three things mash together is your customer experience. And then you've said that's also your competitive advantage. It's not.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Customer experience, in the way that they are defining it here, doesn't work. People need to be able to connect with your business on a level deeper. Customer experience is a seven to ten year old term that I think is no longer enough to define what creates the competitive advantage in your business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've actually had a few people on my podcast recently. Jeff Fromm is one of them. Maria Ross is another one. Nancy Duarte is another one, talking about this idea of purpose in your business. And Grant Botma was just recently on, and he's talking about his culture and how it's a purpose-driven organization. I think it's allowing people to align with the purpose of your business. In Grant's case, I think it's something around the effect of... shoot, I'm going to butcher it. Go listen to the episode. But he uses the ideas of love and caring through financial services. I'm butchering that a little bit, so don't hold me to it 100%.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What I'm saying is, a good customer experience is no longer enough as well. 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. 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One-click buy buttons online in insurance have been around for a long time. None of the businesses that have them would consider them to be competitive advantages. Travelers literally shut down their online quote to buy personal lines product years ago. I just don't think that misses the mark. I think it kind of shows the disconnect between 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 insurance products actually want out of their relationship with the organizations that they do business with. That's my take on that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think it further proves to me that organizations have a purpose, people have a purpose. I used to say to people, "I don't want to do business with you. My goal is not to do business with you. It's not to sell you something that isn't exactly 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."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My purpose, my goal, was to make sure that when you have your worst day, that awful 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. I'm going to do everything I can to get you there. If you're not into that, then I'm not the right guy to do business with. I would say that to people. I had people say, "You know what, that's not what I'm into." That was rare, because I was a decent salesperson by that point. But that was my purpose.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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 by, financially okay, so that if you're in a hospital or dealing with an injured loved one or a sick loved one, when all the emotional crap goes on with that moment, financially you're like, "We're going to be okay. The car is going to get repaired. The house is going to be okay. The business is going to be put back together. The kids' college will be paid for," if it's a life insurance thing, God forbid.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That was my purpose. We all have that. I was not unique in that I had a purpose. Frankly, most of your purposes are probably some version of what I just said. You've said it to your clients. My point in saying that to you is I was very, very clear with every customer that was my purpose. It's that type of messaging that was a competitive advantage to me, because no one else said that. Certainly few people said it the way that I said it to clients, and not many in my local area, I would assume.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That pitch, when I really had to dial in with a 95-plus close rate, who doesn't want to make sure that on their worst day, if you've taken the time to interact with me about insurance, who doesn't want to make sure that when they have their worst day, they're financially taken care of? I can't stop a car from crossing a 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 replacing income, or God forbid replacing... if it were a life insurance thing, long-term care thing, personal injury protection, we max those things out. We make sure those coverages are in place.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That was my purpose. What it did was it drew people in who appreciated that purpose. They believed as I believed. 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. Then we all passed it on to the other team members of that organization. It was that belief that was our driving purpose. That's why that business continues to be incredibly successful, despite only doing moderate technology things.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I feel like delivering expected levels of customer service is like a dry fart. It's not enough. That's not a competitive advantage. That's just catching up. That's just sprinting a little bit to catch up with the pack. You're not actually separating yourself by delivering on an expected customer's experience. I thought that was a strange take given what the rest of the findings in this study were.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, let's see what some of the comments are. We're about 45 minutes in. 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 going to 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 potential new businesses, we are different." This happens all the time. It is crazy.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Landon said, "If it is table stakes, but so many can't even service those..." I understand what you're saying. I just don't know that those are the type of competitors that you want to align with. I can appreciate that there is a decent portion of our independent insurance agency brothers and sisters who are pretty terrible at their job. I think we have to just say that. They're not responsive. They're nine to three. They go play golf at one o'clock on Friday afternoons and turn everything off. They expect you to adhere to the way they want to do business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If I were you guys, if I were at the Crowley Insurance Agency or Landon, 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. I just wouldn't use that as the bar. That's my personal opinion. I am completely aware that there are a lot of people who provide poor service in our industry.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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 what some of the other people on this call or this video are doing, Julie or Josh or... I'm just kind of scrolling through. 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. Those agencies aren't growing. They're dying. They're falling apart. They're going to be gobbled up, most likely by some big conglomerate. They're going to be chopped up and spit out. Those customers are going to be unhappy and looking for new homes.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You guys are going to be the ones, 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 rapidly grow your business. That's how I'd answer that particular question.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Does anyone have any other questions? Specific questions, specific ideas that you'd like me to address? 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. If you have questions, type them in. If you have questions later on, if you're watching this down the road, 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 pull them forward and answer them on a future live stream.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I really enjoy doing these. If you're not subscribed to this channel, I hope you will. I love doing these live streams. They're awesome. If you subscribe and hit the little notification bell, you get notified when I go live. Also, I'm pushing out video versions of the podcast, which people seem to really like. I'm doing a lot of kind of one-off videos on topics that are interesting to me as well.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have a whole vein of content coming out around this idea that "Action is the Answer." This is just what I'm going to wrap up with today. There's this idea I've been thinking about for a long time. It's been a driving force in my own career. I've really wanted to adjust. Partially, I want to improve the keynote presentation that I deliver to the marketplace. If I'm doing a full 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love doing the kind of just plowing through all the different stuff that's going on in the industry. I love those kind of almost Gary Vee-esque style things where 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...
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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. It basically outlines from a 101 level to a 301 level the various tactics and ideas that we can add into our business, our marketing, our advertising, and our experience. That's had many different names. I kind of left the final title as "Crush the Customer Experience." It gets you to and possibly beyond the table stakes level of customer experience that we've described today.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've been giving that presentation, or some version of it, for almost a decade. 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. A lot of people still aren't doing it. Many of you on this call are, which is amazing. It's why when I see you guys, it's awesome because we get to have higher level conversations and talk through different ideas. It's my favorite thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But there are so many of our friends, our colleagues, and our peers from all over the country that are really great agencies that are not adopting these things. 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 coast into oblivion. They're someone who really wants to be successful, but they struggle to do the things necessary. It often just comes back to a lack of action, to a paralysis by analysis, this fear, a fear of being judged, a fear of making the wrong decision, a fear of overextending, a fear of saying the wrong thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've had this idea in my head for a while. I was actually working on it while I was still at Metabolics: "Action is the Answer." 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 mindsets? What are the processes, strategies, hacks to taking action every day to move our businesses forward? Action is the answer. You have to be doing something. Doing nothing is never the right thing. At least that's my hypothesis.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: As I get into this concept, I have a shit ton of notes in here. You can see 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 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. I'm going to do some book notes on it. I have three or four books I need to do book notes on still. But yeah, that was a really good one.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The whole concept is we have to be taking actions. Actions drive results. We analyze our results. That analysis allows us to iterate, take more action. Ultimately, only by doing action 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 take in and then course correct, and course correct, and course correct. That's how we get to where we need to be.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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. I'm not sure what tool to use. I'm not sure who to talk to. I'm not sure, not sure, not sure." There's a lot of underlying psychology behind that. There's a lot of old misconceptions. There's some really awful traditions in our industry that just keep us from taking the actions that move our businesses forward.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Long story short, this is the idea that's wedged into my brain. I'm working on that. It's going to be a keynote. It may even be a book, who knows. We'll see. I can't tell my wife that though, because she'll kill me. It is the core underlying piece of the consulting that I'm doing for agencies and hopefully some carriers. That should be a lot of fun. As I learn new stuff, this is obviously where I'll share it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I appreciate you guys. Thank you for watching this. These are a lot of fun for me. I'm kind of thinking through ideas on the fly as I go. It's very helpful for me to work my own thoughts out. You can probably see some of that as I think through these various topics.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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. 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 want to post publicly,
[email protected] is my email. I love getting emails from you guys. I love you guys. I'm going to get out of here. Thank you. Peace.
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