In this episode of the Ridiculously Amazing Insurance Agent Podcast, Kelly Donahue-Piro interviews Vanessa Kimball, CIC, CISR, the President and Owner of The Kimball Group. Vanessa talks about the idea of making renewal reviews, the benefits of utilizing the pre-call checklist, and how they have implemented the Agency Performance Partner programs in their agency.
Episode Highlights:
- Kelly introduces Vanessa Kimball. (2:03)
- Vanessa shares that their agency is located north of Houston Texas. (2:49)
- Vanessa mentions that their agency was started in 2010, their team consists of 16 staff members, and they have 3 locations. (3:00)
- Vanessa shares that she’s been working together with her husband since they were 17 years old. (4:05)
- Vanessa mentions that their largest acquisition occurred in February of 2020, and almost doubled their size. (5:38)
- Vanessa thinks that the independent agencies will always exist because of those people who want to have relationships with their insurance brokers. (9:08)
- Vanessa mentions that they have to make sure that people understand the value of the coverage, and what they’re trying to do for them. (11:30)
- Vanessa thinks that their biggest challenge for 2021 is to be more recognized and make sure that they educate people. (13:13)
- Vanessa shares that they started with the time management piece and identifying the problem, and because of that, there was some cleansing that happened in the agency. (18:28)
- Vanessa thinks that the main lesson she learned from working together was, staying focused on one account manager that they’re servicing. (24:18)
- Vanessa mentions that the pre-call list is a sheet that they developed with Kelly, who had a base foundation for the sheet and amended it to things that are pertinent to them. (28:55)
- Vanessa thinks that having Kelly has helped her in taking the burden off of her and gave her guidance to the team. (31:33)
- Vanessa shares that their team is making calls every day from the day the renewals hit. Therefore, there’s no backlog of renewal calls, and if somebody calls back, their pre-call checklist is attached to the file. (35:43)
Key Quotes:
- “I think the independent side will always be here because you have people who want relationships. Then you also have the side who just wants cheap, they just want to go with the cheapest thing to be legal, penny pinchers, and not educated on asset protection.” – Vanessa Kimball
- “We finally got to the point, where it’s not where we need to have every piece of business. We want the people who respect our industry, who value our professionalism, and that we’re out here for their best interest.” – Vanessa Kimball
- “Just because you’ve done it this way for 30 years, doesn’t mean that you know what’s right. I think having Kelly has really helped take the burden off of me, and given some guidance to the team. And it’s really helped me to grow as well, to say, things change, the world changes. So you can’t always do things the way you’ve always done it. Once I realized that and said I needed help, that was huge for us.” – Vanessa Kimball
Resources Mentioned:
Advertisers:
- What does it mean to be a Ridiculously Amazing Insurance Agent: com/manifesto/
- New Course Launching on 1.15: How to Reduce Remarketing While Increasing Retention (coming soon)
Learn more about Vanessa Kimball and The Kimball Insurance Group.
