Sales and Purchasing Management: Working with Brokers An insurance company is starting to see some fundamental changes in the attitudes of its independent brokers Custom Paper

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?
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