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34 THE UNCAPTIVE AGENT

best ways of deepening a relationship, whether it’s a
commercial relationship or a personal relationship.
Offering life insurance to every client is easy to do
today, even if you don’t like selling it yourself. You can
easily hire a broker to do the selling for you, and they
will still pay you the lion’s share of the commission.
You can put insurance quoting widgets on your website
to allow consumers to quote themselves and generate
income automatically. And you can train your client
service people to ask your clients about life insurance
during service transactions. Whichever means you use,
I recommend that you actively and aggressively sell life
insurance regardless of the other focuses of your agency.

How Will You Serve Clients 24/7/365?

Will you serve your clients through personal service,
automation, or a combination of both? For over one
hundred years, the independent agency owner has said
with confidence that what sets his agency apart from
others is service. But that service is offered only Monday
through Friday. And it’s only offered from nine o’clock
until five o’clock. That no longer works. Consumers now
demand that the experience they have with every other
kind of business be on their terms, not the business’s.
Clients, commercial or personal, demand that they be
allowed to make a change to their policy at eight o’clock
at night, because that’s the convenient time for them to
do so. Even though you staff your agency with caring,
competent people during regular business hours, you
will need to provide client service twenty-four hours
a day, seven days a week, and three hundred sixty-five
days a year to satisfy the client experience consumers
demand. You might as well build that into your business
from the beginning. You can choose to do that by giving