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SHIELD FINANCIAL: “A DIFFERENT KIND OF CUSTOMER”

The First-Plus plan was designed for Shield s larger customers, even though many of the salespeople at Shield were very successful with smaller business owners. Getting salespeople to refocus their efforts on larger customers was a major issue with Doug Bloom when he took over the Des Moines ofﬁce. Tiffany Williams, the top salesperson for the past eight years, had been particularly upset at the ﬁrst sales meeting by this change in direction. Doug had a lot of experience with selling business owner, liability, workman’s compensation, and other forms of insurance to small businesses when he was a sales rep in Atlanta. Although price was of primary concern for most of these businesses due to their focus on cash ﬂow, smaller accounts were faster to close because one person generally made the decision and the business risks were fairly straightforward and addressable. As a result, the selling cycle—the time it took to close a deal—was fairly short. Even a new account would take only two to three calls to close.

Doug realized that First-Plus was a more complex plan, requiring more time to explain and understand. He also knew from experience that the buying process in large ﬁrms could be more complicated. A committee often made the purchase decision and more people could veto the deal or delay the purchase for an extended period. On the other hand, these accounts could potentially be exceptionally large sales opportunities, with high testimonial value. If a large well-known company chose your plan, it was a natural opener for more companies in the same business.

Doug decided to tackle the problem head-on and the next time he was riding with Tiffany to see some of her accounts asked if they could stop to visit a large prospect to which Tiffany had made an initial sales call to determine their interest in purchasing insurance from Shield. He was really pleased when Tiffany agreed and was able to make an appointment with the vice president of Human Resources for that afternoon. After introductions and some initial small talk, they got down to business.

“As I mentioned last time,” the vice president said, “we would like to get a better handle on our risks, but we need a lot of help. Every one of our ofﬁces is used to doing things its own way, and that includes the liability and workman’s compensation plans they’ve purchased. We don’t have a common set of procedures for determining our risks or handling claims. Making matters even more difﬁcult, we haven’t got a common information system. We might be willing to write a lot of business with you if your people are prepared to work with each ofﬁce individually. Study their particular needs and help them get their act together.” The discussion proceeded with the vice president explaining the background of how decentralized decision making has traditionally been in his company. This was changing, however, and insurance was one of the issues that he felt should be standardized throughout.

Doug and Tiffany thanked the vice president for his time and the information. Doug promised that he and Tiffany would get back to him with some ideas. In fact, Doug was not sure how to respond to this request. This was an entirely different type of situation than he was used to seeing. On the other hand, he knew that they could not afford to lose this opportunity and that this could really turn things around in the Des Moines ofﬁce. He also wondered if this situation was typical of other large businesses.