Summary
Execution Excellence - Did you get your Distribution Model in shape while the "rising tide was high and the market was good" or are you now being "exposed, (and it isn't pretty) now that the tide has receded"? Distribution Segmentation - Do you have a superior, more intelligent producer segmentation model than your competitors or are you right smack dab in "industry-average-ville"?
Analysis
Financially awesome! Life insurance margin income provides incredibly attractive financial benefits to insurance companies relative to most financial instruments including mutual funds and annuities. This is not a secret!
However, what does appear to be a secret; how most insurance companies can effectively, through Execution-Excellence (Ex-Ex) and intelligent Distribution Segmentation (iDS), take advantage of this wonderful "Napa Valley quality" of financial instruments.
Let's start with, what iDS is not. It isn't using: 1) The tired, lame A, B, C system, 2) Quantitative only data, or 3) The non-maintainable, complicated system that is consistently mystifying and incapable of providing reliable information for actual decisions.
iDS does provide your organization and Sales Management with: 1) Distribution optimization knowledge, 2) Maintainable data integrity and 3) The ability to identify opportunities for Wholesalers and Field leaders to grow market share, retain the "right" producers and jettison off the "wrong" producers.
These "wrong" producers, in addition to sucking the oxygen from the meeting room: 1) Demand a disproportionate amount of resources relative to their actual and potential value, 2) Are compliance risks and 3) Typically write "lower quality" business.
Ex-Ex is the disciplined ability to actually get that which needs done, done. Thus, getting your iDS, organizational talent portfolio, intelligent Customer Segmentation (iCS) and product enhancements in place when the tide was high or "okay", is critical. This enables you to grab market share while your competitors are frantically searching for their lost trunks before the tide recedes too far.
Ex-Ex is not: 1) Trying, 2) Accepting "stories" in the place of results or 3) Rewarding leaders for being in the boat that rose with the tide who camouflage the growth as somehow their herculean "effort". Quickly, let these be the standard from which your competitors operate so that you can:
1) Kick sand in their face at the beach;
2) Take their lunch money, eat a great steak meal and enjoy a Napa Chardonnay with their ex-girlfriend; and,
3) Grab market share one producer, one city, one Wholesaler and one Life Insurance client at a time.
Thank you - great selling - Jim Roncevich
