My guidance is directed towards experienced sales and business development professionals who are being recruited by Gallagher.
Gallagher like many insurance brokers in the industry are faced with a large gap between their existing sales force which is primarily aged 50 or older and a younger generation of college graduates who are not ready to be successors. To fill this void they are aggressively recruiting successful sales and business development professionals outside of the insurance industry.
Gallagher recruited me with the “Premise and Promise” that I would be positioned to succeed existing tenured individuals nearing retirement and provided with a 1 million dollar book of business to manage and more in the future. Unfortunately their “promise” did not hold any water along with other obligations that had been discussed. In short it wasn’t more than 3 months before I came to the realization that I had made a mistake. My goal here isn’t to deter but inform you on the realities of insurance and my experience at Gallagher. I hope it helps in your evaluation process.
1. Insurance is the most commoditized product/service in the world. This is a blanket statement but having been in the trenches.....very true.
2. Companies/decision makers you are selling to don’t/will very rarely if ever change their broker……unless they die or there is a successor at their position.
3. Decision criteria is always focused on price…..regardless of how well you know how to position/sell on other differentiators.
4. Insurance companies are not recruiting you to be successors…. but to tap into your network to bring in new business. This isn’t any different than other industries but because of the points above….you will have a very tough time getting your network to move their “insurance” to you…regardless of how good a relationship you might have.
5. There is no competitive differentiators in the industry making insurance an even bigger commodity. Every broker regardless of size….shops their insurance products and services at the same stores & at the same prices. Even a large firm like Gallagher only owns a very small % of the total market. Brokerage firms all have different yet similar marketing schemes to help sell themselves but companies you will sell to know they are all one-in-the same.
6. Internal culture is not team oriented. It is all about “Me & I”. I sat in a meeting where salespeople were asked not to feel threatened because they were planning to hire another salesperson. Why convey that kind of message/thinking to your team? Is that driving good culture? Does that make you want to be that next salesperson in that kind of environment?
7. They have a great CRM tool but be prepared to know that you will not be able to see anyone else’s accounts or opportunities to understand where you can/can’t sell into. Please be aware that when you bring your network of companies/contacts and attempt to enter them into the CRM you may find that 80-90% of them are already tagged by another rep. Those reps will tell you that they are working the account even thought they have no contacts or activity in in the CRM to prove it. They will likely be standoffish on the thought of partnering with you even though you have an existing relationship. That speaks to my point on culture.
8. Within regards to resources…be prepared to have an uphill battle at least to get approval to spend dollars on business development vehicles.
9. Within regards to branch leadership….I would agree with other reviews that it’s unethical to have executive leaders dictating sales strategy when they have never held a sales position. This includes sales managers who are selling and managing a book of business themselves. Conflict of interest right….?
