You just received a calendar invite from one of your carriers’ territory reps saying that they’ll be stopping by. How do you feel? Are you looking forward to it? Or do you feel slightly annoyed?
You probably have a pretty good relationship with most of your reps, but maybe there are some meetings where you feel like nothing gets accomplished, or the rep is only there to check a visit with your agency off their list. Don’t just think of these meetings as the territory rep checking in to see if you are meeting their goals; use these meetings as an opportunity to evaluate the carrier from your perspective. Ensure they’re providing the support you need to reach your growth goals.
OIA created the Agency-Carrier Relationship worksheet to help you organize your thoughts before a meeting with a carrier representative. The worksheet provides a checklist of reports to run in advance of the meeting, so you can come to the discussion with details and reference specific accounts. It also includes a series of questions to help you reflect on how well the carrier has met your needs lately and identify if there are any difficulties that need to be addressed.
We encourage you to save this worksheet and refer to it before meetings with your carrier representatives. You don’t need to ask every question or run every report mentioned. This worksheet was designed as reference material to help guide meaningful discussions with your carrier representatives. We hope you find the worksheet useful in evaluating your carrier relationships! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to OIA with any questions or feedback.
About the Author:
Cristie is a licensed Property, Casualty, Life, and Health insurance agent. Before joining the OIA, she worked at an independent agency in southern Ohio for over eight years. Her favorite thing about the insurance industry is all of the wonderful people she gets an opportunity to meet and now she enjoys the opportunity to help the agents she used to work alongside. Cristie now manages OIA’s Market Access program, an effort she’s eager to build out to set Ohio agents up for carrier access opportunities.
