Cross-Marketing: Here's Your Wake up Call, follows the career of Marlin R. Bollinger, a successful "company man gone independent" and departs the wisdom he gained along the way. The book reveals proven business and marketing strategies for both financial services agents and property casualty agents. Its direct approach encourages readers to first understand the financial services history and then to see its future potential. This book is the wakeup call for agents looking to build their agencies through cross-marketing diversification.
Cross Marketing
Here's Your Wake Up CallBy Marlin R. BollingerAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Marlin R. Bollinger
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4634-1509-9Chapter One
How It All Started
It was April of 1978, and I had just concluded a short consulting stint at a radio station in Springfield, Massachusetts. After two previous false starts in Florida, I was determined to make this one stick. Unfortunately, there were no radio programming positions open, and my funds were rapidly dwindling. So, like so many others, I entered the insurance industry by accident. I needed a job, and the career companies were hiring. I became a life insurance man. At that time, the quintessential life insurance agent represented only one company and sold but a few simple products, either whole life or renewable and convertible term. We also had a small arsenal of disability, annuity, and individual and group medical products. But we mostly focused on life insurance sales.
My first company was the Equitable Life Assurance Society of America, the Equitable. There were two distinct sales divisions: DSF and ESF. The DSF (developing sales force) agents were the neophytes, and the ESF agents were experienced. I never made it to the ESF division. Neither did over 90 percent of the other DSFs. In spite of that fact, I was one of the more successful DSF agents. My success was attributable to being able to sell insurance to my family, my friends, and a reasonable number of solicited prospects.
Like so many other previously staid institutions, the insurance industry was beginning to change in the '70s. As Robert Littell and Larry McSpadden so aptly describe in their book, Crossing the Line, "A career as a 'life agent' was viewed by many as a 'calling'—carrying out the obviously altruistic work of protecting future widows and orphans from poverty and despair. Top life agents were highly visible people within their communities, participating in fraternal, civic, and charitable organizations. With little negative media focus, the life agent was admired; media questions regarding the life product's competitive value or intrinsic worth were never heard. No one criticized the life agent's or company's marketing practices."
To survive in those early years, I regularly returned to my hometown in Pennsylvania to call on those folks I knew and grew up with. That was a lot easier than the cold calls required to survive in southern Florida. It was also substantially more productive. Unfortunately, there are only so many people you can call upon in a small rural town of only ten thousand. Nevertheless, it kept the wheels moving while I attempted to define the prospecting techniques that worked for me at home.
Most career shops required their new agents to conduct Monday-night calls. Those calls were directly from the phone book, reciting a predetermined script written by the training department of the respective company. "Cold" may not be the appropriate term; perhaps "frozen" is better. The sessions normally lasted for up to three hours or until we were totally exhausted or were fortunate enough to schedule ten appointments for the week. Bottom line, it wasn't for me.
What worked for me was cold calling small businesses for group insurance. If the business had a plan, they were usually interested in saving premiums at their renewals. If I could get to the owners, I could usually interest them in providing a competitive quote. In the late '70s and early '80s, small group plans in Florida were often guaranteed issue with no loss/no gain. That made it easy to replace their present plans with more competitive plans. Although it was a much better prospecting method compared to the Monday-night calling sessions, it was still quite difficult. Once I wrote the group plan, I asked to review their business and personal insurance portfolios.
After my subsidy was about to expire at the Equitable, it was off to State Mutual for a new round of financing. Although I appeared to be successful, the career companies were really providing an overly aggressive financing program, in hopes of supporting the new agents until such time as they became self-supportive. It was quite common for agents to move from company to company just to get refinanced. I was no exception.
At State Mutual, I was educated in the business and estate-planning markets and became quite proficient at creating my own usable models for presentation. Of course, compliance had a completely different meaning in 1980 than it does today. My presentation and creative organizational skills soon became known among the less-experienced agents, and my career in insurance was solidified. The new agents were capable of scheduling the required weekly appointments but fell a bit short of sales and presentation acumen. I was able to validate my contract by making joint sales calls and splitting cases.
I soon realized the power of knowledge and persuasion. I'd let the other agents do the heavy lifting, while I prepared the presentations and made the sale. I'm sure these new agents considered me the heavy lifter, since they did not have the confidence to close. I found the business plan that worked for me!
Having transitioned from a very creative management position in the radio and advertising industry to insurance sales may seem somewhat unconventional. In fact, it was just the opposite. Creative concepting is one of the keystones to success in both advertising and insurance. The fundamentals are essentially the same. If you can successfully bring a product to market or grow a radio audience by developing a more listened-to format, you can develop creative marketing systems in the insurance industry. The only difference is that you must first develop the technical expertise and product knowledge to guide you through the creative marketing process.
My success with joint sales certainly simplified my prospecting dilemma but didn't satisfy my desire to reenter management, this time in insurance.
It made good sense to seek a sales management position, considering the reality of receiving an override for the production of those agents under my management. If I could make joint sales, then I could certainly develop and train others to do the same. The more successful agents I trained, the more successful I would be—or so I thought. So off I went to interview for a sales management position and found one rather quickly. The offer was from Home Life, a New York company claiming to have the highest percentage of CLUs in the industry. But, somehow, I got sidetracked and accepted an interview with the Travelers.
The Travelers interview was somewhat foreign, in that I didn't really get their plan. The position was that of a production supervisor. The role of a production supervisor was a jack-of-all-trades sales job that focused around the agencies appointed by the Travelers to market property/casualty insurance. I would be working for a department of a larger property/ casualty insurance company. How was I supposed to sell life insurance and related products to clients of these agencies?
I accepted the position at Home Life. When I called the Travelers manager to inform him of my decision, he put a full-court press on me to reconsider. Not only would I get a company car, but I would also have a healthy expense account, neither of which was offered by Home Life. Although I still didn't fully understand how Travelers could build a profitable business model, I decided to give it a chance.
Chapter Two
The Travelers
To be...
