Working with brokers, An insurance company is starting to

Working with brokers

Assignment Help Operation Management

Reference no: EM132201330

Working with Brokers

An insurance company is starting to see some fundamental changes in the attitudes of its independent brokers. The salespeople for this insurance company called on independent brokers (i.e., insurance agents who are not employees and sell policies from a number of companies), who in turn sold to individual companies and households. In the past, brokers were primarily interested in getting the lowest price or “quotes” from the insurance company for a plan having features the broker’s customer requested. The lower the price, the easier it was for the broker to sell the plan and to show the customer the savings that resulted. Brokers were also interested in how quickly the company responded to a request for a quote. The role of the insurance company’s sales force was to ensure that brokers were aware of any new plans the company developed and to handle any possible service problems.

Increasingly, the insurance company’s salespeople were hearing a different story from the large brokers who had grown by merger and consolidation in the industry. Typical of the comments heard is the following from one of their largest brokers: “We need a lot of help. Every one of our offices does things its own way. We don’t have a common set of procedures, and we haven’t got a common information system. We’ll write a lot of business with you if your people are prepared to work with each office individually and help them get their act together.” The insurance company was not sure how to respond to this request, but knew that it could not afford to lose this customer’s business and that of other large brokers making similar requests.

Discussion Questions

1. How fundamentally different is the role of the sales force in addressing these new customer needs from that addressing the needs of more traditional brokers?

2. How will the selling effort change when addressing these new broker needs?

3. How will the changes affect sales management?

4. What are the threats and possible downside of addressing these emerging broker needs?

Reference no: EM132201330

Questions Cloud

Implementation of change in my organisation successfully : Whom do I involve in the implementation of change in my organisation successfully?

What job-sequencing rule do you see most often in healthcare : What job-sequencing rule do you see most often in healthcare? Why?

Relationship between capabilities and core competencies : What is the relationship between capabilities and core competencies?

Discuss the port of dubai. : Discuss the port of Dubai.

Working with brokers : An insurance company is starting to see some fundamental changes in the attitudes of its independent brokers.

Windhoek bakeries has identified niche market : Windhoek Bakeries has identified a niche market in which they would sell a special type of bread to high schools in Namibia.

Identified marketing opportunities : Briefly describe what statistical methods and techniques you would use to evaluate the above identified marketing opportunities?

Victim of one or more heuristics biases : Think of a time when you were a victim of one or more heuristics biases. What was the outcome?

Game-changing tech all sections no unread replies : Game-Changing Tech All Sections No unread replies. No replies. What are the strategic options for a firm facing game-changing technology?

User Account

All Pages