Too Far from the Core

If you’re like me, this strange new world we’re living in has given rise to some serious contemplation. There’s been a lot of new-found time to think and unprecedented things to think about.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how far some of us have moved from the core of this business, and how there’s the real potential that this event may help re-center us, at least a little bit.

When I think about the core of this business, I am thinking about the selfless act of purchasing life insurance, that unique product that financially protects the insured’s family, loved ones, business partners, and employees in case of the insured’s dying too soon.

This is a financial product, to be sure, and it’s certainly a financial decision when a person decides to buy it. But it’s also a decision based – at its core – on a foundation of love and concern for other people.

Having been in and around this business since 1981, I will tell without hesitation that the best advisors, marketing executives, product design people, and life insurance company executive of all stripes I have met in those many years all have one thing in common – they all understand that at the core of this business is the love the insured has for other people. And it’s no stretch then to also observe and conclude that the best people in this business also love people. I say that especially about the best advisors; an advisor doesn’t face the kind of rejection one faces in this business without a passionate understanding that the help one is offering is important – critically important to human beings and their security and happiness.

It is no secret that this business, like all businesses, has steadily over time sacrificed a great deal of our human interaction for efficiencies brought about through advances in technology. Everything has focused, it seems, in recent years on doing more, at the same, faster, and more efficiently. And if we didn’t have to interact with a human being while accomplishing all that, well, that’s just the price we had to pay. Sometimes it was actually a price we wanted to pay.

We’re feeling now, I think, while inside our homes, practicing social distancing, that this was and is a very high price to pay. That lump in your throat you feel when you see a photo of a young woman standing outside the window of her grandmother’s house, pointing to the engagement ring on her finger as she does her best to share a very personal moment, is a dead giveaway that you too are feeling like the price is too high.

Maybe when we come out on the other end of this, we’ll go right back to our high tech ways. But I am predicting that many of us will not. In fact, I know that many of you are taking this time even now to reach out to clients with telephone calls, even above the easier and more efficient method of emails. And I know others who are writing personal handwritten notes to clients, just letting them know that those clients and their families and businesses are on their minds. I think all of those methods are absolutely terrific. And, I think it’s terrific that so many advisors are taking these strange days to retrench and reconsider how they have been doing business.

As you reconsider your own approach, I hope you’ll come back to the understanding that people and their love for one another are at the core of this business. And I also hope that, where it’s appropriate, you’ll start moving back, closer to that core.

Chuck Hirsch, CLU, is the former editor and publisher of Life Insurance Selling magazine. He continues to contribute to insurance industry publications, in addition to providing consulting and marketing services through his firm, Hirsch Communications Consulting, LLC. He can be reached HERE.