It never seizes to amaze me that insurance agents have probably by far the worst reputation of sales people and they keep on confirming just that!
A few months ago I decided to change my insurance agent as I was not satisfied with my existing one who hadn't called me for years to inform me of how my insurance policy was going or even ask how I was doing. I found out that he left the company and someone else got my policy 5 months ago.
When the new agent called to ask me not to switch agents he said that he was going to call me as their policy was to call each customer once a year. What? This guy was going to call me in 7 months? What kind of genuine customer interest policy is that? He got my insurance policy and was going to call me in 7 months? I politely said to him that I wished to proceed with changing my agent and he then started begging me not to. He even told my previous agent to call me (yes the one who didn't call for years!) and beg me too. The old agent had even a last option reason to give me not to switch, saying that he was going to lose his commission!! (You can imagine my surprise).
After they saw (and no wonder) I wanted to switch agent they started accusing the new agent who would take care of my policy that he was stealing their customer and they would let go!! I even had to call the general manager of the insurance company myself to explain what happened! Finally after 2 months and a lot of wasted time my issue was resolved.
So what are the lessons we can learn from this story?
1) The agent who was going to call in seven months could have easily followed my wishes and make me happy, and by creating a positive image of himself establish some kind of rapport for a possible future cooperation (of course by avoiding to say "its the policy to call customers once a year").
2) Selling is all about building relationships and not commission. Having failed to build some kind of relationship with me not only this guy lost a future sale with me but also many possible leads.
3) Blaming someone else for your failure is always the easy way or should I say the most preferable way of losers. If only had this guy call me when he first got my insurance policy in his hands and pay a visit I wouldn't think of switching agents cause finally someone would have paid attention.
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