By Bud Blake | November 11, 2020 at 03:47 AM
A third-generation agent says the best measure of an agent's
success has been, and still is, renewals.
The DeLorean sports car of memory rushes me back through the
decades. Back through the 2010s, through the 2000s, through the 1990s… all
the way to June 1961.
John Kennedy is president. Fashionable people are wearing hats.
IBM is preparing to release its first Selectric typewriter.
I’m a trainee at the insurance agency my dad, Jim Blake, is managing
for a major life insurance company.
The Way Becoming an Agent Was
In June 1961, I was age 18, and I had just finished my sophomore
year at Rockhurst College (now Rockhurst University) in Kansas City, Missouri.
Back then, all I could think about was becoming a successful provider of
insurance products and services, for existing office leads customers and,
hopefully, new clients of my own. Of course, I was clueless about the what, the
when, and the how of how I was going to accomplish this feat.
In the mornings, at the agency, I took a correspondence study
course to learn the insurance business. In the afternoons and evenings, I went
on calls and appointments with the top agent, Thomas V. Lynch. Tom Lynch was,
and is, a master salesman, very smart, and a real professional. Although he and
his family now live in Minneapolis, we are still very close friends and
confidants to this day. Tom became known as one of the most able estate
planners in the country.
Here are two concepts I learned that summer.
The first concept was the value of building a clientele.
I learned this by seeing how Tom interacted with his clients.
Tom was very important to them. He showed how important an Insurance Agent
could be to families and businesses. An Insurance Agent can provide the client
with a real piece of property, which pays a set amount of dollars at the death
of a family’s breadwinner, or at the death of a key person at a business. What
a truly remarkable asset for protecting families and businesses.
Although, the insured clients would be deceased, if they were
still alive, they would have been proud to know they had made these strong arrangements
for protecting their families and businesses.
Providing this fine insurance product and the service that goes
along with it affected me in such a positive way. It’s one of the reasons I’ve
been in this business my whole adult life.
The second concept that caught my attention was the value of
renewal commissions.
My dad literally sold me on the idea that renewal commissions
were the most important part of my compensation as an Insurance Agent. This was
the sizzle for me, because renewals were (yes! I used the past tense ‘linking
verb’ were) truly such a unique component in our compensation program back
then. We had such a diamond, so I thought!
Renewal commissions alone set us apart from every other industry
in the land. In my view, this component alone is the medicine our industry
needs to attract and build a strong insurance producer work force. A LIMRA
study said that our industry’s agent retention rate is 11% after four years.
Another Ride in the DeLorean Time Machine
The Summer had ended, and I was ready to return home to the
current time.
However, the DeLorean was balky, and it rolled me back to 1926 —
the year my father began his career as an Insurance Agent.
He, too, started at his age of 18, after living for five years
in an orphanage in St. Mary’s, Kansas, that was run by the Jesuit priests.
The DeLorean kept going and rolled me back to March 28, 1895,
when my grandfather, Daniel J. Blake, began his insurance career.
Then the DeLorean accelerated to 1698, when the first life
insurance company was founded in England. Whew!
Then I found the time direction knob and returned to 2020.
Looking Back From 2020
Here’s what I learned from traveling back in time.
Early on, I was in The Insurance Business.
For the past 30 years, there has been pressure for me to say
that I’m in the Insurance & Financial Services Business, or just The
Financial Services Business.
I, myself, am in the Insurance and Life Planning Business.
Now that I’ve returned to 2020, I’m grateful to be back home,
doing good-to-great and wonderful work developing relationships with my
existing clientele and along with new clients just like my dad discussed with
me many, many years ago.
The revenue from my retainer relationships with my clients sure
looks just like the renewal commissions my dad sold me on as my compensation
program back in 1961. Thanks, Dad!
Bud Blake is
the owner of Blake and Associates, an insurance agency in Leawood,
Kansas. He has owned the agency for more than 40 years and trained dozens of agents.
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