Fishing for Knowledge

Stan twisted open the throttle on the outboard and our boat skimmed smoothly away from the dock. The lake was glassy calm in the late afternoon sun and we were anxious to pull in a couple of good walleye before it got too dark to see.

Stan’s successful brokerage was in a town of some 30,000 just over an hour from the city, and his cottage was on an island-studded lake nearby. As my company’s senior marketing representative I was well acquainted with Stan’s love of the great outdoors, and I was pleased that another good broker friend, Bob Davies – who was co-owner of a thriving midtown business – was also along on our fishing trip. We ran down the lake for ten minutes, then Stan slowed down and cut the motor as we swung around a small rocky island standing alone in a deep channel. “There’s usually some pretty good action at this spot, guys,” he said. “Minnows are in the bucket. Leeches are in the cooler.”

As Bob and I reached for the minnow bucket, Stan put his hand over the top of it and grinned. “Hold on, guys. I’m about to educate you two. This will go under the category of local knowledge.” He pushed the minnow bucket off to one side of the boat. “For some reason the walleye here are fussy eaters. Minnows work some of the time, but leeches work all the time.” He expertly threaded one on his hook, opened the bail of his reel and flicked out the line. Bob Davies and I looked at each other, then also reached for the pile of curling black leeches.

“I never underestimate the value of education,” I said. “I bow to superior knowledge.” Bob Davies got his line in, then turned to us. “All joking aside, I think that in our business, education is finally getting the recognition it deserves. I know we’re certainly pushing it harder than ever in our office.” He tightened the drag on his line and continued. “In our part of the insurance world of course, we have to pick up our continuing education credits as a requirement for being licensed.”

“Seven and a half hours for each of you, every year – right?” I queried. “And six hours for all your other licensed staff?” My two broker friends nodded agreement. “I completely approve of the system we now have,” Bob went on. “It compels us all to keep sharp, but most of all it’s good for our customers because they’re dealing with insurance people who are better informed and more capable. And our system of required professional upgrading is coming to other parts of the country as well.” He looked across at his two friends. “But I’m also convinced that education and self-improvement have to go beyond this.”

“The race goes to the swift, eh?” I asked. That brought a decisive nod from Bob. “I think it does, Dave. Gone are the days when you learned your job, or trade, or profession, then sat back for the next thirty years and jogged along at a comfy pace. That simply won’t cut it any more. Consumers are much more informed today, and they’re entitled to expect that their insurance advisers are as well. Today we all have to keep learning, we need to expand our knowledge base, we must stay ahead of new technologies.”

“You’re absolutely right!” Stan cut in. “In our market I’m convinced that success will favor the firms with the best-trained staff. I need people who are equipped to handle any situation, deal with every problem, answer every tough question. If someone has to call for help, it wastes three people’s time: the person who doesn’t know, the person who has to help out, plus the customer who has to wait until you all get your act together.” As he spoke, I felt a sudden gentle pressure on my line. In one smooth, easy motion I swung the tip of my rod up to the sky, set the hook, and was rewarded with the thumping jerk of a fish bending my rod over. A couple of minutes later a nice two and a half pound walleye was thrashing in Stan’s net. “Nice one, Dave!” Bob said with a laugh. “Stan’s little lecture was right on.”

Stan smiled as he swung the boat back up towards the island for another slow drift past the drop-off. “How about that?” he said. “Living proof that education pays off, eh?” As we got our lines in the water again, it was Stan who asked the next question. “Tell me, Bob – what new things are you doing to upgrade the ability of your people?” He answered slowly, “to tell you the truth, we took a look at our overall proficiency and figured that, from a technical standpoint, we were in pretty decent shape. Where we needed to improve was in our client focus. Was our level of customer service as high as we wanted? For instance: did they communicate clearly and concisely on the phone, and on paper? How well did our staff handle those common questions we all get from our customers? How good were they at handling complaints? Were they coping efficiently with problem accounts?”

Stan nodded his head. “Good place to start.” Then he turned to Bob. “But you know, there are there are lots of courses available from our provincial association. Two of my CSRs went to their customer service and sales training courses last year. They were excellent and reasonably priced as well. My people were really pumped when they came back.”

“You’re right,” Bob answered. “But let’s not forget the Insurance Institute and all its provincial chapters. They offer a terrific range of courses leading up to the CIP and FCIP designations. They get you your professional credits, of course, but they also give you the status of those degrees.” Then he leaned back on his seat cushion. “For my money they’re light years ahead of most of the one, two or three-day courses available from the commercial outfits.”

“Haven’t I seen a price tag of $1,000 or even $1,500 for some of these one-day seminars from the commercial shops?” I interjected. “Oh yes!” It was Stan who answered me. “I signed up for one of these offerings once, quite some time ago, before our own association had cranked up its training school. It was a one-and-a-half day seminar on ‘overcoming objections’ and ‘resolving disputes’. It cost me $1,250, and that was many months ago, so it would be a lot more expensive now. I got a fancy manual, a nice pen, and the lunch was pretty good – but the content wasn’t really any different or any better than I can get from my own association.”

Stan shrugged his shoulders. “And you know, as the hours went by, I kept getting the feeling that the course was stamped out for a general business market, it wasn’t targeted directly and specifically to the insurance business, or to the problems I face every day as an independent broker.” Beside me, Bob grunted. “Fact is, there aren’t any great, deep secrets in our business. Many of these courses just recycle and re-package basic facts and information.”

“You guys get a lot of feedback from your customers,” I added, “especially at renewal time. Having your CSRs equipped with good, honest and factual answers is pretty damn important, eh? The nice thing is, there’s actually a lot of very useful information freely available. For instance, the Insurance Bureau of Canada has a great little brochure called something like ‘Why Automobile Insurance Rates Are Increasing’. It sets out frequently asked questions and answers them very clearly. If I were answering the phone to personal lines’ customers, I think I’d have a copy right beside me.”

By now, we had drifted well past the island and out into the main lake, so Stan fired up the motor and slowly puttered us back to the channel. Once we got our lines back in the water, Bob spoke up. “Well, I found one answer to the education of my staff right under my nose, and almost by accident,” he said with a chuckle. “Dave here, and I, were having lunch one day, and he mentioned that his company had created a really solid sales training program for its own people. Remember that conversation?” he said, turning to me, and I nodded. “Part of the company’s sales training program was a session on ‘handling objections’. I think they had created it to help their customer service phone staff, who got a fairly heavy volume of calls about rising auto and homeowner rates, about the impact of September 11, about accident forgiveness…that sort of thing. Well, it seemed to me that this would be very helpful for my CSRs, so I called up the company’s staff training supervisor and asked if they could involve my people in a training session using this information.”

“I’m sure Dave put in a good word for you, Bob,” Stan said, poking me with the butt of his rod. “Well, it helps that Bob is one of our special relationship brokers, because of the volume he writes with us, the years he’s represented us, and his good loss ratio,” I added.

“Obviously, we couldn’t, and shouldn’t, do it for everyone. We don’t have a lot of staff training people, and of course, we don’t want to be seen as competing with your association’s broker training facility.” Bob nodded at me. “Well, the upshot was that Dave’s company training supervisor put on a very good three-hour session for my CSRs. And although the basic material was pulled from the company’s own training manual, their trainers took the time to tailor it to our needs.”

“How so?” Stan asked. “They spent some time with my CSRs in advance, asking them what sort of objections they were hearing over the phone from our customers. Then they formulated good, common-sense responses to these objections…” Bob paused for a moment and looked down at his twitching line. He gave his rod a quick upward lift and a minute later the water around the boat suddenly thrashed as a hefty walleye came bucking and twisting into our net. He lifted it out, used pliers to slip the hook from its mouth, and dropped the fish into our cooler. With a quick grin at us, he continued his story. “We divided my staff into two groups for the three-hour session. We did one group on day-one, then the other half on day-two. Afterwards, my CSRs told me a big part of handling objections is being factually prepared for the tough questions. When you’re factually prepared, you’re mentally prepared. And when you’re mentally prepared, you’re professionally prepared.”

“Does the company charge for their trainer’s time?” Stan asked. “As I recall,” I replied, “our trainer charges a nominal $50 per person, so you can see it’s not exactly a profit center for our company.” The sun had now disappeared below the distant tree line in a soft, orange glow, and the deep shadows of nightfall began to press in on the lake. A loon call echoed across the water.

“These two walleye will do nicely for our supper,” Stan said as he started up the motor again and pointed our boat past the little island. “Time to head back to the barn and continue your education. The next lesson will be on the fine art of filleting fish.” Bob Davies snapped his rod back into the holder and nudged me in the ribs. “Should we point out, Dave, that our teacher is the only one in this boat who got skunked?” “We could,” I said, “but maybe we should let him find our way back to the dock first!”