Could 15 Minutes Save Me 15%?

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing some “mystery-shopping” for a client, so I filled out an online form to request an auto insurance quote.

I guess I shouldn’t have been, but boy was I surprised when my telephone rang almost before I clicked the “Submit” button!

My intention was just to go through the motions and answer a few basic questions, but then I was surprised again.

Apparently, it had been a while since I had last shopped for car insurance, so I had no idea how much of my personal information the insurance sales representative knew without having to ask me.

That’s why it took no more than just a few minutes for him to give me a quote, which shocked me because it was for less than half of the rate my beautiful wife Michele and I had been paying our insurance company for years.

Over the next hour or so, I got calls and rate quotes from several other insurance reps, and every single one of them was significantly less than what we were paying at the time.

I asked Michele to call our current insurance provider to let them know what was going on, and was completely dismayed to discover that they immediately offered us about a 40% decrease in our monthly payment.

This told me that they knew they had been over-charging us for who-knows-how-long, so even if their proposed lower rate beat any of the quotes I had just received (which it did not even come close to doing), of course I vowed never to give them another penny ever again.

It took more than just “15 minutes” to officially switch both our auto and homeowners insurance, but again, there was no way we were staying with our then-current insurer (whom we had been with for over 10 years) for one more day.

So, what are the lessons here for all business owners? Here are just a few…

1. If you insist on competing on price, you are asking for big trouble. You are attracting price-shoppers who are, by their very nature, completely fickle, and will look to leave you as soon as they find a cheaper alternative.

   SOLUTION: Do the work needed to find or create something differentiating about your business OTHER than just the price you charge for your products or services.

2. Integrity is an absolute MUST in business. If you change your rates, prices or fees to your clients’ advantage, don’t keep it a secret from them and hope they don’t find out.

   SOLUTION: Always be honest with your customers, clients or patients! Sometimes you may take a short-term financial loss, but being less than honest is about the worst long-term strategy you could ever implement. Making sales and getting customers is easy – building a business and keeping customers for life is a challenge, but is certainly worth it.

3. Anyone who’s been in business for any length of time is bound to encounter a dissatisfied customer, client or patient.

   SOLUTION: Whenever that happens, make sure to go above and beyond to solve the problem. This is NOT the time to think about cost-cutting and trying to do the minimum possible. Remember: It’s much easier and less-costly to keep a current customer, client or patient than it is to find a new one.

Had our auto insurance company employed any of these solutions, there’s a very good chance they would have kept me as a customer. I certainly didn’t want to spend the couple of hours answering questions, filling out forms and dealing with paperwork to switch insurance providers just to save around a thousand bucks a year. I would much rather have felt valued by my current insurance company and stayed with them.

There are other lessons to be learned here as well, but this should be a good start to get your brain flowing…