Cover

Story

Sound advice on
prospecting, sales
and closing, from
three veteran agents

by Dennis Green

A
sk any independent pro-
ducer and they will tell
you: Prospecting, selling
and closing are difficult.
Thats why not just anyone can suc-
ceed in this business, for it is one that
many enter without formal training
and are left to sink or swim during
those first few years with little guid-
ance or support. NU spoke with three
veteran producers to get 10 solid ideas
on how to sell better, from finding new
business, to presenting to clients, to
saving deals about to go sideways.
Floyd Mays is a past president
of the Professional Insurance Agents
of Virginia and D.C. and is hailed by
his colleagues as a natural sales-
man. The Floyd Mays Insurance

for
Agency, based in Richmond, Va., has
offered coverage for the automotive
and transportation industriestow
trucks, in particularsince 1977.
Steve Ruchman spent decades in

better
the insurance business as a pro-
ducer, specializing in sales to the
garment manufacturing industry in
New York City. These days, he is re-
tired and living on Long Island, N.Y.

selling
He still serves on the board of PIA
Management Services Inc.
Susan Coffin was a P&C pro-
ducer for 23 years until she sold her
practice, Coffin Associates, in 2014.
During that time, she specialized in
selling fine arts coverage, commercial
and industrial risks. Today, she is an
independent insurance claims consul-
tant based in Bethlehem, Pa.

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 illustration by Kotryna Zukauskaite

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  ven your worst criticism
E she says. So I went to my client and I
is a sales opening.
( prospecting)
Every producer has encountered pros-
pects that are not exactly keen on being
sold, but some will be outright hostile
toward you, says Floyd Mays. He recalls
one cold call he made on a tough pros-
pect who told him, All you insurance
guys are the same. Youre a bunch of liars
and thieves who are looking for some-
body to screw over. Floyd could have
gotten offended and walked. Instead,
he said, Somebody has been screwing
you over for years. Why not give me a
chance? It gave his client a good laugh
and began a business relationship that
lasted for years.
A little theatrics can go
a long way. (prospecting)
Insurance is an intangible product, and it
requires some kind of illustration of what
it actually does to make some clients
understand why they should buy it. When
Steve Ruchman was first getting started,
disability income insurance was a new
product, and people got paid in pay enve-
lopes, rather than with direct deposit. So
Steve acquired 100 blank pay envelopes
and attached them to each of his sales
letters he sent to his clients, asking them:
What would happen if this pay enve-
lope stopped arriving? Suddenly those
prospects could imagine their paycheck
not coming in, and for a young kid who
never sold a disability policy, Steve found
himself with a flood of new business.
Theatrical, to be surebut it worked.
Pe oplewill
not buy what
they dont
understand.
(sales)
Price is a great way to get a clients atten-
tion, but it is not the only thing on which
they will buy. If clients dont understand
the value of the product, the sell is a no-
go, which makes client education a must.
That can be easier said than done, how-
ever. Mays recalls a client whom he simply
could not sell, and could not understand
why, as he had a great product his client
needed. The problem was, he realized,
was that the client couldnt read. Once
Mays read the product details to him, the
client signed, and stayed with him ever
since. That was 25 years ago.
have changed, and you need to revisit
that. She recalls a large manufacturing
firm she had for a client who preferred to
rely on the insurance provided by their
freight forwarder. Getting money out
of a claim for freight forwarding when
you have no pull is almost impossible,
convinced them to give me the policy in-
stead. That was a sale. That was a policy
I didnt have before.
The client cant buy if the
client doesnt comprehend
their risk. (sales)
Some clients either lose control of their
insurance programs, or they never fully
understood their needs in the first place.
In such situations, selling on price is
pointless, because what they need is a
strategy for managing their risk. Mays
recalls one large account for which he
was presenting for the first time after
prospecting it for years. When he ar-
rived at the meeting, he had an incom-
plete quote on hand, but it was the best
he had. He never took it out of his brief-
case, because it soon became clear that
the client had no idea what its insurance
needs are or how to address them. The
sale became all about helping the client
manage its risk. Price became second-
ary, and Mays never even tried to sell on
it. When he landed the account, it was
for well more than what his initial quote
would have been.

 There is gold in the

clients you already have.
(prospecting)

Sometimes, the most efficient prospecting

comes from expanding the business you
have with existing clients. You would be
surprised at how many people dont do
this as much as they should, says Susan
Coffin. There could be a client who, for
some reason, chose not to do business
with you but now they might want to
go back to you. It could mean that your
client has changed, or that their needs

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 Know how valuable your own time is. (sales)

The average producer loses 10% to 15% of his or her business every year just through attrition, so they need to bring in at least that
much new business every year to break even. Make the best use out of the time you have to develop the business you need.
Ruchman recalls one client he visited in New York Citys garment industry, which is filled with no-nonsense characters. The client
made him wait in the lobby for 90 minutes, and when they did meet, he brusquely brushed the agent off, assuming he was there to
sell garment inventory. Youre a schmuck, Ruchman told the client, and walked out. The client was offended, but Ruchman knew that his time
was too valuable to be wasted, especially from a client who couldnt give him even the most cursory attention. About three years later, I picked
up this guys P&C business, says Ruchman. He was still embarrassed over it. He knew what he did. But it was all right. I got the account.

 Dont just protect your
client, protect your
contact. (sales)
Sometimes, buying coverage isnt just
about protecting your business: Its about
protecting yourself. This gives you a huge
advantage not just in serving your client
better, but building the kind of relationship
where your services become invaluable.
Coffin used to handle Bostons Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum for art theft,
where the museum typically only insured
its temporary collections and items on loan.
In 1990, thieves stole paintings worth $500
million from the museums permanent
collection in the largest personal property
heist ever, and the museum had declined to
insure any of them. Coffin knows because
she tried unsuccessfully to get the museum
to cover them just months before the theft.
I literally fell out of my bed and rushed
downtown to my office to make sure that
the notes and the copies of my proposal
were in my file, she says. Otherwise, we
could have been exposed to huge lawsuits
for failing to sell the museum the coverage
they needed. After the theft, she convinced
the museum to insure its permanent collec-
tion, explaining that even if they could not
ever replace lost paintings, claims could
help renovate damages to the facility, to
damaged paintings to even pay a ransom,
should thieves kidnap artwork.
Having that coverage also protects the
leadership of the museum, who might be
seen as negligent for insufficiently protect-
ing the museum. When talking to CFOs
or executive directors, I tell them I am not
just protecting your firm, I am protecting
you, Coffin says. You will never lose your
job because of me. You have to make it
personal. Every sale is personal.
The customer isnt always
right. (closing)
The responsible producer is not just
pushing product; he or she is helping a
client identify their risk needs and pro-
vides solutions for them. Those needs
and solutions might fall outside of what
the client wants to discuss, which puts
the producer in the uncomfortable
position of arguing with the client.
Mays recalls when he made his
initial presentation to his first really
big client. The owner called for quotes
on the values in his current cover-
age, which was a mess. The values
had changed and the buildings and
their contents were underinsured, so
Mays changed the policy accordingly in
his presentation. I told you I wanted
an apples-to-apples quote, the busi-
ness owner snapped. But the apples
you have are the wrong apples, Mays
replied. Im using the right apples.
When the owner refused to budge,
Mays prepared to leave the table en-
tirely. Only then did the client ask Mays
to come back, and ultimately he bought
the coverage that had been suggested.
Sometimes, it pays to walk.
(closing)
No client relationship is immune to being
overturned, and sometimes that involves
outside consultants or other producers
being brought in to scrutinize the busi-
ness you have already put into place. It
can be an uncomfortable situation, and
sometimes, fighting to keep the business is
a lost cause. The smart play is to position
yourself to reclaim the business once it
suffers for not having you to oversee it.
Ruchman recalls a large client he
had in the garment industry where this
very thing occurred, and an external
consultant completely blew up the insur-
ance program the producer had worked
on with his client for 12 years. Rather
than fight, Ruchman resigned from the
account. When the consultant screws
everything up, Ill be back, Ruchman told
his client. And guess what? Two years
later, I had the account back.
Never lose your poker
face. (closing)
At some point in every producers career,
a client will put an account out for bid,
and youll find yourself trying to outbid
business without enough information or
time to do it properly. It is a strong-arm
tactic that clients sometimes use to put
their agents or brokers on the back foot,
and it can be rattling.
Coffin recalls an incident in which a
longtime client did this to her, and she not
only had 24 hours to match or beat her
competitions premiums, the client blacked
the premiums out on the proposal so she
couldnt know what to beat. As she puzzled
over this, she held up the proposal to the
light, and could see through the black ink
to the competitions number: $536,241.
She revised her own proposal down to
$536,000 and told the client she wanted
them to have $241 in wiggle room.
She kept the account, but the clients
CFO asked her how she knew what the
other number was. I just told him that
it was my job to know what that number
is, Coffin says. Sometimes, holding on
to an account just comes down to luck.
But everybody has been in that situation.
Everybody.

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