Insurance Company Off the Hook for Hefty Legal Fee

9-5-13

Entercom's Insurance Company does not have to pay over $800,000 in legal fees for former part-time morning show assistant Mathew Carter, according to Courthouse News Service. Back in 2007 Jennifer Strange died of water intoxication after participating in a "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest at KDND-FM. Carter was handing contestants the water.  

Strange drank 1.5 gallons of water during the morning-show stunt. Her family sued Entercom Sacramento and several of its employees. A jury eventually awarded the family more than $16.5 million in damages.

Strange's family eventually dismissed Carter from the suit. However, during his defense he opted to hire his own attorney rather than one provided by Entercom's insurance company. He racked up over $800,000 in legal fees and submitted a bill for that amount. A Sacramento County judge found that Carter's rejection of the insurance company attorney "was not reasonable and therefore costs and fees incurred by Carter to defend himself were not 'necessary expenditures'" under labor code.

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(SALES) Working With Independent Insurance Agencies

7-19-2013

Here?s a five-year marketing and advertising plan worth a million dollars for a local insurance agency.

Family-owned independent insurance agencies make great local direct customers. Their money comes from commissions paid by the insurance companies. Gross margin of profit after the cost of labor is 30 percent. Average sale for auto insurance for a two-car family is just under $1,000 per year. Most family-owned local insurance agencies depend on sales of automobile coverage because auto premiums give the agency the chance to up-sell and also get the customer?s home, life, health, business, and other policies.

The local independent agent?s biggest problem is the plague of national discount companies competing for his auto insurance business.

Consumers are concerned about escalating insurance premiums. But an even deeper concern is that the insurance company will fight the customer on claims. Most people are under-insured. It is in the client?s best interest to educate the people on how best to use his services. But first the client must convince consumers that he is trustworthy and will assist the customer when it?s time to pay claims.

Get the owner to come to the station and share his stories about what happens to people who are underinsured or have no insurance at all when a crisis hits. He probably has hundreds of good stories. Let him tell them without reading from a script. Record them and edit them, leading with the most provocative thing he says. Again, no scripts. Let him tell his stories in his own conversational way, the same way he?d speak to the people if they were sitting across the desk from him.

Agency owners usually become very animated when they?re telling their stories. Here?s what one independent agent told me. ?When it?s time to get the claim paid I?m right here to represent my people. The folks in this town know I?ll help them when they have a claim. In fact, I love filling out claim forms. It?s like a hobby. And, I?ll stand by my customers when the claims adjuster comes to make sure my customers get exactly what they deserve. When you go with one of those national discount companies with a claim good luck. I mean, who are you going to talk to? A lizard??  Wow. So, working with him is like having an insurance policy inside an insurance policy.

He also had this to offer. ?Hey, I?ve got news for you. You?re the bread-winner and you?re going to die. That?s a fact, my friend. You?re going to die and what is going to happen to your dependents when that happens? Have you thought about that? Getting over your death is bad enough. Are you going to send them the poorhouse too? Ninety percent of the people in this town are UNDER insured. Do the right thing and cover your assets.? He put emphasis on the first syllable of assets.

And this. ?If you?re a renter, I?m telling you, get renters insurance. Do it. I see people every week who come to me after they?ve already lost everything to a thief or a fire or a flood and it just breaks my heart.?

Or this regarding disability insurance. ?I call it ?paycheck insurance,? because that?s exactly what it is. If you?re disabled this policy pays you up to 75 percent of what you were making before you were disabled. I sold a policy to a man in his 40s. All he had to do was sign the form and write me a check. He kept putting me off. For his birthday he bought himself a motorcycle. He was hit by a truck within the first week and was paralyzed from the waist down. The first thing he told his wife was that he had never signed the disability insurance policy I left him.?

He also mentioned that, ?Whether you want to see me or not, I make it a point to visit our customers at least once per year and photograph all of their valuable property. We put those photos on a thumb drive and keep it in a bank safe deposit box so that if you ever have a claim, we?ve got evidence for the insurance adjuster.?  That?s another important service difference that deserves to be mentioned.

These stories bring to life intangible products like insurance policies. And they deserve to be told and heard.

Paul Weyland is a local direct sales trainer. He works with station groups and broadcast associations to bring more long-term local direct business to broadcasters. You can reach Paul at 512 347 9883 or paul@paulweyland.com . Paul?s new book ?Think like an Adman, Sell like a Madman" is available at amazon.com.

For more articles by Paul Weyland, go HERE.

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Radio Drives Revenue For Local Insurance Company

This is a success story managers should print, blow up and post on the door of the conference room. It's a great motivator for salespeople and a super idea generator for your next sales meeting. Greg Tramontin has been in the insurance business since 1982 the same year he became a fan of radio advertising. In 2009 Tramontin started Go Auto Low Cost Car Insurance. 2 years later he's up to 41 locations fully deployed in the state of Louisiana with visions of opening in Pennsylvania, Tennessee or North Carolina. He's averaging about 5 to 6 new store openings per month and he is not afraid to admit radio has played a major role in his growth over the past two years. And we let Tramontin tell his story about how radio advertising turned him from a fan of the yellow pages to a lifelong user of radio.

"I go back to 1982 and this is kind of an interesting story. I actually worked for the Yellow Pages for 5 years prior to getting into this business. When I got into the insurance business, I didn?t go work for somebody first and one day decide to open my own business. I opened my own business from day one with absolutely no experience. I was 28 years old and I sold my house. I had about $30,000 in equity, which I took to open up the business in Lafayette, Louisiana."

"After working at the Yellow Pages for 5 years I decided to purchase the largest ad available in the phone book, especially for the category of auto insurance. I opened in October of 1982, just with Yellow Page advertising. The phone was ringing and I would get 3,4, or 5 calls a day. The first day I sold a policy, the next two days I wouldn?t sell any. Then I would sell 2 on a Friday. It was kind of going like that. I had about $2,500 left of from my original $30,000 capital base and a radio rep from KSMB came in the door. She came in to talk to me about radio. I said I really don?t have much money. So we put together a little two or three week October schedule. She helped me put together the ad, nothing fancy, which started on Monday."

"That following Monday, now remember I told you I was going through 5 calls a day, I got 48 calls and sold 7 policies. From that point on, radio became a staple of our marketing campaign.  We used television to build image and the brand. We used radio to reinforce that message with frequency.  They work hand in hand. I've subscribed for years to TAPSCAN, Arbitron, and Nielsen. We don?t go through an advertising agency, we buy ourselves."

"If we get 100 calls, we can sell 45 of them which is a hot percentage. We are just trying to reach thousands of people, frequently, with a good message, and get them to pick up the phone and call or go to our website. We go into a new market with a budget and end up buying probably 8-10 deep.  Our demographic, it used to be 18-49, but we have moved it to 21-54.  That is mainly because what we do is not like selling a bunch of shoes where the worst thing that can happen is maybe the shoe falls apart and they want their money back. When you sell auto insurance, we have to pay the claims.  You have to be very selective. It?s matching risk to pricing. You have to match that pretty accurately.  Teenagers, we know, are very difficult.  We try to skip them altogether.  We now go from 21 to 54, adults.  We buy Urban.  We buy Country, Adult Contemporary, Classic Rock.  Our reach is probably approaching 80-85%.  Heavy, heavy frequency."

There is much more from Greg Tramontin in the August 22nd issue of Radio Ink magazine. In that issue, he touches on how he also uses Google AdWords in his marketing campaign, his view on radio salespeople and his advice on how salespeople can better adress the needs of the client. You are not going to want to miss out on this great success story.

Subscribe to Radio Ink Today by clicking HERE

We would like to Thank 2011 Radio Wayne Award Nominee Jennifer Luquette of Citadel in Lafayette for suggesting we speak to Greg.
Have a local client success story? We'd like to hear about it. Contact me at edryan@radioink.com

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