The Customer Is at the Center: A Slogan That Has to Become Reality

Troy Korsgaden is an insurance and financial services consultant and principal of Korsgaden International, which specializes in global marketing, distribution, agency building and technology strategy for many of the world’s largest carriers and financial services companies. His career spans more than three decades, and he has spoken to hundreds of thousands of executives, agents, brokers and staff. He joined the recording in a suit and tie, from an office whose bookshelf holds his own books and family photos, a background Gilad insisted was real.

About Troy Korsgaden

Troy Korsgaden started in insurance in 1983 as a practicing agent in Visalia, California, in the Central Valley. His company gave him a phone book as his book of business, and every client came from meeting people and telling them what he does. He grew a firm to more than 22 employees with his sister, and for the last 25 years, while owning it, has consulted and spoken across the US and globally. He has written multiple books, including Power Position Your Agency, which has sold over 150,000 copies, and his latest, Inflection Point.

Distribution Is an Ecosystem

Troy works with essentially every P&C carrier, many life and financial services companies, and their distribution. Today, he said, distribution isn’t just agents but a 360-degree ecosystem in which a customer can buy anytime, anyhow, anywhere, through many delivery mechanisms. His term for the future is OPS, an open platform product solution, where the customer has a view of everything with total transparency, not just on price but on products, coverages and limitations. It isn’t here yet, he said: the technology to make a single platform isn’t ready, though the model can be adopted today without it. When it arrives, distributors win on advice and service.

Adapt or Die, With a Kohl’s Example

The book’s core message: the old model won’t work, you can’t cross your fingers, and the customer holds the keys to the kingdom. He cited Kohl’s accepting Amazon returns, a way of changing its model to get people into stores: you drop off your Amazon return, and naturally browse. Whether it works remains to be seen, but it shows companies changing their business model to focus on the customer.

Be the Gateway

For agents and carriers, Troy’s advice is to be the gateway to all things insurance and financial services. You don’t need to sell everything to everyone, but customers should think of you first, come for advice first and service first. With auto, he noted, you might quote 100 people to win 15 or 20, so the other 80 or so need to be turned into a meaningful interaction so they come back. By “meaningful” he means the interaction mattered to the customer, not just a conversation. He hears company people say “the customer is at the center of everything” at conferences, but it’s a slogan that has to be reality.

His shift: from sales to service, and from putting the commission first to letting it come. Customers’ expectations were reset by Walmart and then Amazon: it’s not about price but ease of doing business. Auto and home, in his estimate about $270 billion of premium, is where price has leveled out and winning every time is impossible, so set yourself up to win the customer.

A Message for Everyone

Gilad asked who the book is for, agents or carriers. Troy said everyone: carriers need to retool distribution, and agents should think of themselves as a firm, collaborating to offer more. Every household or business needs to be a profit center for the firm, and with more products and services per customer it will be profitable; if it’s a cost center, no firm can afford it. He thinks the personal relationship and advice segment is large, and that carriers whose model is purely transactional will survive as specialists, partnering through expertise with others, but transactional selling has hit its peak and the time is to pivot to the customer.

Getting It Right

Troy said the answer starts with personal and corporate accountability: stop going through the motions and checking boxes. He cited watching The Last Dance with his son and seeing how Michael Jordan practiced and planned hard even when no one was watching, and played to win every day. A customer experience that delighted in the 1990s is commonplace now, so we have to keep upping our game.

Other advice:

• Start small and get a first win. Gilad cited Admiral McRaven’s advice to make your bed. Troy added: go out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is, and test and learn without waiting for perfection.
• Simplify. Growing firms are getting it right not because they are digital, but because they made it easy, populating technology with what the customer actually needs. Tech that is shiny but empty does nothing.
• Question defaults. When lawyers or compliance say “we can’t,” ask them to show why, because sometimes it’s just a default.
• When the game changes, change how you play it. For seven to ten years the model was “here’s your coverage, here’s your price, do you want it.” Troy believes that is not profitable as a standalone transaction, but is profitable if it is the gateway into your offerings. Meet people wherever they want to do business, even, in the future, he joked, by hologram.

His own corporate experience taught him how complicated a national rollout is, whether technology, marketing or underwriting, so he has more empathy for the difficulty of change today.

Brand, Lighting and the Black Suit

They discussed video setups: Troy recommended a ring light, and said your background should be you and you should think about your brand. His is the suit; his tip is that if he started over, he’d buy a black suit he could wear five days a week, changing the shirt and tie. Gilad’s brand, he said, is sunglasses. Gilad recommended HBO’s Industry.

Advice: Unlearn, and Leonardo da Vinci

Troy’s books: he just finished Unlearn and rereads How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, which had an amazing impact 25 or 30 years ago, adding that the book you don’t read can’t help you. He binge-watched The Queen’s Gambit with his family, the second recommendation of it on the show. The two also joked about growing up in agricultural towns: Troy’s Visalia (population about 110,000) is surrounded by orchards, near the raisin and nut plants he mentioned.

Key Takeaways

• Troy’s vision is an open platform product solution (OPS), with full transparency on price, products and coverage, with distributors differentiated by advice and service.
• Be the gateway to all things insurance and financial services so customers think of you first, even when they don’t buy.
• Move away from transactional selling: “here’s your coverage, here’s your price” is not profitable unless it opens the door to a relationship.
• Companies say the customer is at the center; it has to be reality, with accountability at every level.
• Start with a small first win, simplify, and question defaults.
• Every household or business should be a profit center for the firm.