The Wedge: CRM or Organic Growth Technology?

Imagine this conversation with another agency owner:

“Charlie, what are you guys using as a pipeline tool?”

“Well Mike, I had my IT guy look into it and he recommended we go with SalesForce.com, he said it was as good as anything out there.”

“Yep, that’s what I’ve heard. Seems like a fast-growing company, they must be doing something right. By the way, how’s the utilization?”

“Well, we rolled it out a couple of years ago, people are still getting used to it. A few of our young guns really like it.”

Look, the fact is, there are more than 1,000 pipeline management and CRM tools on the market. There are two that have an enormous marketing budget. Under most circumstances, if you ask your IT department to make a recommendation, they’ll come back with these two options: SalesForce.com and Microsoft Dynamics.

No offense intended to the IT department, but when was the last time they had to run a sales meeting, do sales training, hire a new producer, conduct goal setting, define differentiation or fire a producer? When was the last time they had to make a cold call, beat the incumbent, ask for an introduction or present a renewal?

Why does the IT guy get the task instead of the vice president of sales? Mostly because agency owners see off-the-shelf CRM as a tool for producers, not a weapon for agency growth.

By the way, if you already contracted either of those products, you should feel really comfortable as they are both very large firms. It’s analogous to the reason a lot of risk managers go with Marsh. Who’s going to get fired for going with Marsh? Even if the relationship doesn’t work out well, the risk manager can always say: “But, they are the biggest!”

The best way to decide on some sort of technology to help you grow your agency is to avoid talking about technology at all until you analyze the real problem.

The place to get started is with a well-defined objective; the real outcome you desire?

If you answered agency growth, then it only makes sense to determine what is preventing agency growth and seek to find the best way to fix it and then implement the tools, systems and training that will enable it.

Start by asking yourself these questions:

• Are pipelines empty?

• Suffer from low closing ratios?

• Do producers rely too much on price/coverage and are they getting rolled by incumbent?

• Producers not asking for or getting referrals and introductions?

• Many producers seem unmotivated; they hit their peak performance years ago?

• Many producers have low confidence and write smaller accounts?

• Not enough accounts are getting cross-sold?

• Differentiation is too vague. Can you clearly distinguish between your producer’s offering and that of the incumbent agent?

• Competitive intel is kept in people’s heads and difficult to obtain consistently?

• Goal setting process is hard to manage and not motivating producers?

• Sales meetings are time- consuming to prepare for and not getting desired results?

• Has it been difficult to find new producers that can and will sell?

•Is onboarding new producers difficult?

• Are new producers validating their salaries in the allotted time frame?

If you suffer from more than two or three of these challenges, will an off-the-shelf CRM tool solve that problem? Probably not. It might even make the problem worse, and here’s why.

When something new like this is presented, it’s seen as the holy grail, the big fix. It’s like a new shiny coin; everyone pays attention for a couple of weeks, then they go back to their old habits. All it provided was a distraction from the real problem — a lack of agency growth.

An off-the-shelf CRM tool might confirm you have empty pipelines, but it won’t help you fill them.

An off-the-shelf CRM tool might confirm low closing ratios, but it won’t help you improve them.

An off-the-shelf CRM tool might have a user-defined field for listing referral opportunities, but it won’t help your producers get them.

Henry Ford said he never asked his customers what they wanted: “Most would have said they wanted a faster horse” not a motorized vehicle.

Steve Jobs didn’t ask either. He just built what he thought his customers would want.

Before smart phones, there were dumb phones; all they would do is make a phone call. It did what it was supposed to do… after all, it was just a phone.

But Steve Jobs thought through the problem. He somehow knew that people like to take pictures. He knew they like music. He knew they’d prefer to have access to their email and websites wherever they were. He knew that no one wanted to carry a phone, a music player, a camera, a pager and a computer. So, instead of a dumb phone, dumb music, dumb camera, dumb pager and a dumb computer, he built a smart one.

If Steve Jobs or Henry Ford were here today and the insurance business was their focus, there is no doubt they would probably build “smart technology,” not another dumb CRM. They would build a tool to help you drive “organic growth,” not another me-too CRM storage depot. It would be used as a weapon for growth, not a bucket to store business names.

They’d already know that most agencies suffer with non-motivated producers, so they’d integrate the goal setting right into the system.

They’d somehow know that agencies struggle to differentiate themselves, so they’d build differentiation into the system.

They’d know that sales meetings were lame, (spreadsheet liars’ club meetings), so they would engineer a better way to run them and build it in.

They’d know that producers don’t get enough training to improve their prospecting ability and sales skills, so they’d build it in.

They’d know that agency owners struggle to hire new producers and onboard them, so they’d build those systems into their technology.

Add that to the basic capabilities of the off-the-shelf tools and now you have organic growth technology that seems pretty smart. That would make it easier to drive growth.

The next thing you’d see is Steve Jobs, standing on a stage in Menlo Park, Calif., wearing jeans and a t-shirt, ready to announce a big discovery.

“Motivate producers, beat the competition, grow your agency… and you can do it all without breaking a sweat… here it is, organic growth technology.”

Everyone in the audience would be wowed, and they would all buy it. Share this article with a colleague.