So I get a call from someone at a fairly large, established agency.  Had a few questions, was trying to “help” someone out.  Nice enough, but not necessary.  I appreciate the effort, I really do.

About two hours later I was on the phone with a new friend(some say client/customer) and was binding their policies.  Could be coincidence that this person was with the same agency that the other agent worked at…or maybe it isn’t.  Lets dive a little deeper;

I am all for helping people and sharing information and ideas.  Honestly not sure that I ever declined the opportunity to help and tend to be proactive with ideas and information.  But in this case, the deal was dead on arrival and likely represented zero revenue.  It also cost the ultimate and only equalizer, time.

Now the other one.  I was actually helping a friend out with this one as well, see I help.  In this case there were five or so policies and my help was needed with two so the other person can do the other three.  No problem.  Everyone wins, especially the new friend who now has two professionals working with them and a disgustingly large savings and better policies.

So if you are keeping score; another agent needed help and now we are both taking a nice package from a much larger agency.  The new friend(customer) was cool as can be but couldn’t understand why his agency of 10+ years hadn’t done this.  He didn’t need the full explanation but here goes;

Flight Control: ” Maverick you’re at 3/4 of a mile. Call the ball”   

Maverick: “Roger, Maverick has the ball.”

Great movie, great scene and for some reason it came to mind when writing this.  Why does it matter?  Because Maverick saw the ball; he saw the light which showed the clearest path to land the plane.   Most agents/agencies are distracted by so much nonsense and therefore overlook the obvious, easy paths to a “sale.”  They also seem to overlook how awesome retaining a customer is for the bottom line.

The agency that gave me this business, let’s be clear they let it go, has at least as many markets for this business as I do and likely has 50% more.  But they let it go.  Clean records, pay in full, seems nice, clean buildings, etc.  Everything you want.  Baffled.

Now some math, rounding the numbers to semi protect things;

Agent A had this package at $5000 and was earning 15%(conservative) commission so; $750.  Nice.

Agent B +C now have the package with more appropriate and improved coverage for $3500. 15% is now; $525

Now lets dive deeper; this “lead” cost neither of us anything.  Based on his past behavior he’ll likely stick around for a while.  Also, had Agent A simply been a bit proactive this person would have likely been thrilled to have a new premium of say $4500.  So you would have “lost” $75.  Not really.  You would have made a human being/paying customer happy and likely kept his revenue for several more years.   Also, if you had any sort of process in place to manage data the transaction can be done in less than 30 minutes.

To make it worse, I put my piece with a market you also have access to.  Sad.

But hey, I see your advertising all around.  You’ve been in business a long time, you have some sort of referral program, you “use” social media, etc.

But you lost sight of the ball……thank you.

P.S. The American public needs you to do better.