When Your Producer Gets Arrested On The Clock

Scott Howell (0:01)

What do you feel like insurance agents need to do in terms of branding themselves, their agencies, the carriers they represent?

SPEAKER_2 (0:08)

When you are marketing something you're not in control of, you're not in control.

Scott Howell (0:13)

The very last thing I do, I get agreement from them, and then I end the call with making damn sure whatever I say I'm going to do gets done.

Bradley Flowers (0:25)

How many hours did your team spend last week on policy reviews, quote comparisons, lost run extractions? Now multiply that by what your producers cost per hour. That's the number that out market eliminates. The reason that I love Ascend is they're the only vendor focused on helping agents automate all of their manual finances and accounting practices, which is really the boring stuff, but that's really where the rubber meets the road in terms of profitability to your agency.

Scott Howell (0:51)

You know, we're going to write business with carriers that make it easy for us to write business with.

Bradley Flowers (0:57)

If the conditions have to be right for you to succeed, your success is conditional. It's not real success.

Scott Howell (1:03)

Play like champions, man. Here we go.

Insurance agents from around the world, welcome to The Insurance Guys Podcast. My name is Scott Howell, your fearless host and leader, insurance agency owner and insurance evangelist for I Protect Insurance and Financial Services based out of Huntsville, Alabama. And before we get started on today's episode, please help me welcome, he is a six foot three sophomore from Mobile, Alabama. Parade first team all American rivals, five star recruit. He is a fantastic insurance agent and a great American. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and welcome the incomparable Mr. Bradley Flowers. How are you Bradley?

Bradley Flowers (1:45)

In the last podcast, last week's podcast, Clint said I had nice looking ankles, but you have whatever the opposite of a kankle is, is what you have. Those shoes are making it like how Luke looks when he puts my shoes on.

Scott Howell (2:02)

Yeah, that's right.

Bradley Flowers (2:03)

No, I'm joking.

SPEAKER_2 (2:04)

No, no, no.

Scott Howell (2:04)

Listen, one of the big, not pet peeves, but bully things when I was in school because I was so skinny. I only weighed like, when I was a senior, I was like 150 pounds.

Bradley Flowers (2:15)

Really?

Scott Howell (2:16)

And I looked like a clown, clown shoes.

Bradley Flowers (2:19)

Yeah, because you got big feet.

Scott Howell (2:20)

I had like size 13 shoes and I weighed 150 pounds.

Bradley Flowers (2:24)

So that's interesting.

Scott Howell (2:25)

Yeah.

Bradley Flowers (2:26)

But we had a guest, no show. So we thought we would do a continuation of the last.

Scott Howell (2:30)

All right.

Bradley Flowers (2:30)

Guys, guys, guys, a hell of a story.

Scott Howell (2:32)

Guys, I've got two stories. I've got two stories that are so unbelievable. And both of them are insurance stories. I have, I'm going to tell you both these stories. We've got a short podcast today. We've only got about 30 minutes.

Bradley Flowers (2:45)

Which one are you going to tell first?

Scott Howell (2:46)

Well, I was going to tell the first story I was going to tell was I have the most unbelievable automobile claim story that has ever been told.

Bradley Flowers (2:56)

Okay.

Scott Howell (2:57)

You ready? Yeah. So I have two clients who do not know that each other exists. One's a commercial client. One's a personal lines client. You are going to love this so much. The personal lines client only has his home with us.

One mono-line home policy. He had his autos with progressive direct.

You following me so far?

Bradley Flowers (3:28)

Yep.

Scott Howell (3:29)

The commercial client is a auto dealership that also has a auto service department. The auto dealership is a used auto dealership. So two clients. The personal lines client only has his home with us.

He drives to my other client, who is the auto dealership, and he purchases a car from said dealership for his 16-year-old kid. I believe it was like a Mazda MX60 or something like that. $17,000 car. Takes it home, gives it to the kid, starts driving it for about a day, check engine light comes on.

He takes the vehicle, he calls the dealership and he says, hey, this 2017 Mazda I just bought from you, the check engine light just came on. And they said, of course, it's only been a day or two since he bought it. They said, we'll bring it in, we'll fix it, and it's probably a sensor, and we'll give it back to you. He takes it in.