Declaration of Independents: Cathy Hall

Although she was “humbled” by the award, Hall believes she’s just one part of a greater whole.

As chair of her local NetVU chapter committee, Hall is “happy to help—I want to do whatever I can,” she says. “But to me, being a member is more important than being in charge.”

ON SERVICE?

When we moved to an agency management system after the Y2K scare, that’s when I started getting involved. More recently, I was one of the people who raised my hand at an inappropriate time and helped resurrect the local Chicago chapter of NetVU. Everything snowballed from there.

INDEPENDENT AGENT COMMUNITY?

I’m fortunate to have worked with some great people, and not just at my agency—at all the other agencies. Everybody wants to lend a hand. Everybody will put in their two cents and give you their words of wisdom.

Do I volunteer? Yeah. Do I give a lot of my time? Sure, but so many people do. It is truly a community of people helping other people.

SECRETS TO SUCCESS?

Networking, education and developing relationships. If you’ve got those things, what can go wrong?

INDUSTRY’S GREATEST STRENGTH? WEAKNESS?

We do a phenomenal job of educating insurance personnel—everybody’s got their designations. But by the same token, we don’t impart that same wisdom onto the clients. We say, “In 15 minutes, you can insure everything you’ve spent your entire life working for. Oh, wait—15 minutes is too long. It should only take you seven.”

Shame on us as an industry. It’s up to us to start asking more questions. We should be concentrating on, “What are you getting? What are we covering? What’s important for you? If water backs up into your house, are you covered?” We need to find out what’s important to the client, then educate them on the benefits these coverages.

Will it take a little bit longer? Sure. Nobody has time to come into the office and have a two-hour conversation, so send them an email. We’ve currently got some Facebook ads going with one of our companies. Those are good things. Put that information out there so when somebody searches for something, instead of finding “Click here for a two-minute quote,” they’ll find a blog post about what happens when water backs up into their basement.

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND?

Like 90% of the people out there, I found insurance by accident. A friend of a friend needed somebody to work for them, so I actually started out right out of high school as a part-time receptionist for a life insurance agent who just happened to have some property-casualty needs as well. Dan Browne, the president of Forest Agency, bought the p-c side 30 years ago. I just celebrated my 30^th anniversary with the agency.

BIGGEST ROLE MODEL?

Definitely Dan. I’ve been very fortunate in my career that he’s been pro-IT, very pro-automation—I kind of take those things for granted. Do we do everything alike? No. Do we argue sometimes? Yeah. But he instilled in me that belief in education and doing things right to help out the client. I’ve done my best to pass that down to the people I am now in charge of.

LESSONS FROM CUSTOMERS?

I’ve learned never to assume anything about our customers—never to project my own beliefs or thoughts on them. You have to uncover what their specific needs are and cater to those, not your own perceptions.