But really, I call them Friends and Acquaintances;

“There are no strangers here, only friends you haven’t met yet”  William Butler Yeats

A bit deep on Friends from 2015 coincides with a training session with some pieces that are a bit off

I’ve never quite fully understood the philosophy of  “A, B and C customers….”  In the sense that I completely understand what is being said; focus your time on energy to produce a better outcome.  Great.  But, on the other hand, when you see in insurance today can partially be attributed to widespread use of this kind of attitude.

Depending on where you learn about it, it essentially says you need to classify your fellow humans by how much money they invest with you or how many policies they have with you, etc.  We humans label each other enough.  Was thinking this(and may expand on it elsewhere) when looking at my car.  The car has a logo.  Shouldn’t that be enough?  Nope, instead, in my case, it also had four separate markings to further clarify the company name, model name, and two features.  A previous owner even put another label on it.  Yes, the brain has a lot to work on each day, I get it.  But do we really need to continue to label things so intensely?

Consider an alternative, stems from a piece of how we work;

• Neutral or better; essentially, you do not need to love everyone, just like them.  It is ok to be indifferent, as long as they are nice.
• All of their money is green.  Period.  Shouldn’t that be enough?
• Not everyone will fit all the boxes you propose for them.  Do they really need to fit all them? NO! Especially if we are neutral or better and their money is green.
• Look at your whole ecosystem; the fact is we would really like to have an average of 3 policies per household/customer.  Averaging this is possible but it is not reasonable to have three policies in every household.  Period.
• The actions of some customers actually let you help others.  Is this subsidizing?  Maybe.  But if you look at your customer base as a whole entity, this is healthy.
• Everyone in the company needs to be willing and able to help everyone that calls.  It doesn’t mean they can or will.  Of course, we have people who specialize in commercial.  We have those that can sort of help with commercial.  We have customers that just prefer one person to another.  All of this is ok. Why?  Because we have things we do that make this ok.

This can go a lot of ways.  I’ve seen this explained in some fairly despicable terms.  I get it.  You have a finite, unmeasurable amount of time on this sphere.  Me to.  But, on the other hand, if you have the ability to help people why aren’t you spending time on that instead of classifying who to help and who not to help?