The course of Paul Woodford’s financial services career to date has seen him take on roles in both banking and insurance – but it is insurance broking where he has found his passion.
Insurance is one of those professions that people often end up falling into, the owner of the Coversure Insurance Solihull franchise noted, but, for him, it represented a clear alignment with his key area of interest – speaking with people to help them and their businesses. With this ethos in mind, he took on the Coversure franchise eight years ago and has seen it evolve to become a mid-size commercial broker with a team of 21 people and a clear niche in the market.
That relationship-building drive has remained with Woodford all along his insurance journey, which he highlighted is critical as the essence of insurance broking is all about building strong partnerships and making sure people have the right cover in place.
However, that’s not to say that it’s always easy to have those conversations - and in a recent online post, Woodford outlined the vitriolic response he was greeted with during a call with a prospect. His experience shines a light on the ill-treatment that client-facing staff in insurance brokerages can receive and he highlighted how such occurrences emphasise the need for mutual respect in workplaces and beyond.
“It was an interesting call for sure,” he said. “I’m quite thick-skinned with things like that, I don’t tend to take them personally because the guy who spoke to me didn’t know me all, so his comments didn’t relate to me personally. But I think that if I was advising one of my members of staff, I would have asked them to terminate the call long before it got to that point.”
Woodford noted that while as a highly experienced insurance professional he was able to brush off the abuse, facing such conversations can be a lot harder for younger or less experienced members of a team. People calling in should be mindful of who is on the other end of the phone, he said, as the Coversure Insurance Solihull team has been joined by some Kickstarters for whom this is their first job.
“To hear some of those kinds of things could definitely be upsetting and unsettling,” he said. “And, potentially that could be the end of their career not just in insurance but in dealing with clients. I think there’s a bit of a duty from that other side to think about who is on the end of the line. The big saying I have is ‘don’t treat people how you’d want to be treated, treat people how they want to be treated’.
“I don’t imagine that [the caller] would have expected to have either one of his members of staff or family members spoken to in that way, so just don’t do it to somebody else. I think, probably in time, we may use that call for training purposes to explain what would happen in that situation. I would not want one of my members of staff to engage with that. I would tell them to put the phone down and move on. Because I don’t think anybody deserves to be subjected to that kind of abuse when they’re ultimately just trying to try to help the client out and do their job.”
Exploring the advice he offers staff on how to deal with having difficult, rather than outright offensive, conversations, Woodford said he believes the key is not to take anything personally. You don’t know what kind of a day the person you’re speaking to is having, he said, or what kind of news they might have just received. Sometimes you can just catch people at the wrong time. In these situations, his advice is not to engage and simply to withdraw.
“Ultimately, there are hundreds of thousands of customers out there that we can help, so if we can’t help that one, that’s fine,” he said. “We just move on. And that’s something we talk about in the office – that in sales, sometimes ‘no’ is a good thing to hear because it means we can move on to the next person who does need our help.”
Difficult conversations often revolve around price, Woodford said, but as an individual brokerage within the commercial world, his business is very much about providing the best value as opposed to just the cheapest price. Some clients are looking for the cheapest policies out there, irrespective of what that means for their coverage and he and his team are very comfortable walking away from clients with that focus.
“I think we’ll probably see that more and more with the things that are happening at the moment, with increasing National Insurance contributions, and with the crunch everyone’s having in terms of interest rates rising,” he said. “But we will continue to stay firm and offer the advice that we have and give the policy to the customer that offers them the best value, not necessarily the cheapest price.”
Luckily, the vast majority of the conversations Woodford has on a daily basis are not so unpleasant and he highlighted that he is enjoying the opportunity to get out and about and meet some clients and prospects in person once more. Coversure Insurance Solihull is lucky to speak to customers spread all across the country, he said, and reflects this by being available to contact in the way that suits the individual client best – be that face-to-face or otherwise.
“I think, in order to fully understand the risk, it is really important to get out and see clients,” he said, “so, with those restrictions being lifted, we’ve definitely seen an increase in the number of client visits that we do. And that’s really good for us, and ultimately also for the client.”
