Joining us on today’s episode is Ron Davis, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Customer Management at Zurich Commercial Insurance. With over 30 years of experience in the industry, Ron has implemented customer management best practices across Zurich’s commercial insurance business, making significant contributions to the field.
Ron began his journey at Zurich in 2000 and has held various executive positions since then. He holds an MBA from Concordia University and a business degree from Carleton University, and his extensive experience spans across Europe, Canada, and the United States. Ron has also been involved with SAMA for many years, starting as a member of the SAMA’s Knowledge Committee, and then joining the Board of Directors in 2013. In 2015, Ron became a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors.
Join us as we explore Ron’s valuable insights on the art of strategic account management and outside-in selling, touching on his involvement with the SAMA and his perspective on what makes a world-class strategic account manager.
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Political Entrepreneurs: Mastering The Art Of Strategic Account Management And Outside-In Selling With Ron Davis
Introduction
HD: I have the pleasure of speaking with Ron Davis, who’s the Executive Vice President and Head of Customer Management at Zurich Commercial Insurance. He is responsible for implementing customer management best practices across Zurich’s Commercial Insurance business. Davis joined Zurich in the year 2000 and has previously held executive and operations-level positions at Arkwright/Factory Mutual Insurance Company.
He has an MBA from Concordia University in Montreal, and a business degree from Carlton University in Ottawa, Canada. Now, he lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Ron had more than 30 years of business experience dealing with many of the world’s largest multinational companies. During this time, he has lived in Europe, Canada, and the United States. I know for a fact he speaks French and English well.
From 2006 to 2007, he was selected to be a member of the David Rockefeller Fellows Program, which is associated with a partnership for New York City. Ron has also been involved with SAMA for many years, starting as a member of SAMA’s Knowledge Committee, and then joining the board of directors in August 2013. As you’d expect with Ron, in 2015, he got moved up to become a member of our executive committee.
He finally in 2015 became a member of the executive committee of the board of directors, which is the highest level you can reach within the SAMA architecture. Ron has always been a great contributor and we so appreciate what he does. Ron, thank you so much for agreeing to talk with us. We look forward to hearing what you have to say about the art of strategic account management and outside in-selling.
RD: It’s a pleasure to be here, Harvey. Again, I much appreciate the invitation, and I feel very close to SAMA and I’ve gotten lots of value from being involved with SAMA over the years. I’m delighted to speak with you.
Outside-In Selling
HD: Let’s dive right into this. We’ve had a fantastic and fascinating discussion with you about what you look for in strategic account managers and how world-class SAMs engage with customers by embracing the art of differentiation and customer-centricity. Also, mastering the art of outside-in selling to innovate with your strategic customers. I have to say, you’re the first person I’ve talked to about outside-in selling so I’d like to start there and ask you what outside-in selling looks and feels like at Zurich.
RD: From my perspective, everybody, whether it’s at Zurich or any other company that is trying to maintain good relationships with their customers and grow those relationships is you have to have deep customer understanding. That’s where it all starts. On top of having competent and well-selected people who have the support of the organization, those individuals need to invest the time and effort to understand their customers. To understand what their motivations are, what are the challenges they’re dealing with, and what issues are going on in their industry.
Again, in our business, we’re dealing with all types of industries and companies all over the world. We can’t know everything about everybody, but we have experts who do have deep expertise in pretty well every industry. For me, if I’m a SAM, part of the issue for me is to be able to navigate within my own company to get the expertise to help me better understand how can I add value.
As I get to know the customers, how can I understand the challenges they’re dealing with between what they will tell me, what I’ll read about in the press, and what I’ll listen to in their analyst meetings or their investor meetings? I’ll research everything I can to understand what the drivers are and what some of the obstacles and challenges are, and then align whatever we want to talk about and try and do in support of their strategy to what matters to them.
I’m not an insider in their company, but from the outside, I can develop a lot of knowledge and figure out how can I add true value that makes it clear. I’ve invested time and effort to understand them in their company, but obviously, I don’t know everything so I have to also be open-minded, listen, and ask good questions.
HD: In this outside-in selling, is there a specific target point that you look at? Are you a type of individual or entity within the customer who wants to build that relationship and start building that relationship with or does that vary with by customer?
RD: We have a lot of different products and services. There’s a wide range of propositions we can offer our customers. It means that we’re dealing with many people within the organization. There’s usually in our business, a central person that is assigned by the company to manage their risk, insurance, and servicing needs, but they also rely on lots of different stakeholders within their company. Whether it’s in the legal arena, the HR arena, the operations arena, or the logistics and procurement arenas, in sustainability, for example, with all the climate issues.
There are a lot of different players that are involved. For us, the idea is to make sure that as we try and access the appropriate people, whoever we’re engaging with the prime contact can understand that there’s a business rationale. There’s something there to talk about that could be of interest to their colleagues, and they’ll help open those doors if we make a compelling story in a compelling case as to what’s the upside for them.
I think that one of the keys when you’re looking at the talent of our own people is to be able to have good communication skills, savvy, and understanding, and not just to be pushing product. To push a product and make it look like you’re trying to sell something for your own interests is not appealing to anybody on the buying side.
HD: I like it especially when you start thinking about all the different functions that exist within every company. Basically this legal, risk management, and all these different groups that are in there, now it’s a question of finding out where is there a need. Where is there something that they should be thinking about that they haven’t?
Political Entrepreneurs
Maybe something brand new or some new product that’s been developed, or some new capability that’s out there, or some new threat that is popping up over the horizon. When we’re talking about the SAMs, you described them as being political entrepreneurs. Can you share with us what a political entrepreneur is from your perspective it sounds like this is a part of the fabric within Zurich. It’s a term that you use, it sounds like it.
RD: We didn’t coin the term and I first heard it probably through SAMA at some past conference or something many years ago. The concept is, and lots of companies deal with the same issue. The issue is that if you’re a SAM and you’re a strategic account manager. You’re leading your organization on a particular customer, you want to create value. You want to be able to innovate. You want to co-create value together with the customer.
To do that has lots of challenges, and that’s why it’s not easy to do. The skills you need, and the reason we refer to a political entrepreneur are because you need to have good political acumen. You need to understand the sources of power, authority, and decision-making. Who are those individuals both within your company and at the customer? From an entrepreneurship viewpoint, you need to think about creating a new path, creating something new as an entrepreneur does.
However, to do that, you have to have good instincts to figure out, “What’s the value proposition? Why would they care about this? How does this meet their needs? What kind of eye for opportunity do I have to be able to identify something and figure out what are the resources I need to align? Also, do I have the authority and the buy-in from my own company to try and make it happen before I even bring it up to the customer I also have to be very good at managing expectations as I go through all of this.”
HD: That makes sense to me. You’ve got to have your radar if you will. Scanning the horizon, and even just scanning the people in the room and looking for signals from them when you’ve captured their attention on something. I can see it.
RD: What’s interesting is that as you said about capturing their attention, that’s where the competencies of the SAM are, what are the skills that they need to be able to do this? Whether you’re a brand new SAM or somebody who’s mature in the role, everybody can develop the skills. Some people may innately have them, but other people can develop those skills and be better and better at doing this.
However, to do that, you need to have certain competencies. You need to be a good strategist. You need to understand where are we today, where are we trying to go, and what are the tactics of how we can end up getting there. However, on the other hand, you can never do anything alone as a SAM. Almost nothing can be done alone. You need to be a great team player. You need to be able to get people to want to follow you and listen to you.
You have to establish credibility inside and outside the organization so that people will say, “That’s an interesting idea,” and give it some consideration and think about it, especially if it’s something new. Can we do it? Can we align our resources to do something? Also, from an entrepreneurial viewpoint, you have to be able to persuade and influence. You have to be able to create a vision of what could this look like. How could it work? What’s good for the customer and what’s good for us so that everybody wins? It’s best when everybody gets value out of it.
For us at Zurich, we’ve innovated in many different areas, and we’ve done it not only because we’re trying to satisfy the customer. Obviously, that’s a key consideration for us because we’re very customer-focused and are very clear that that’s a core part of our strategy. However, by the same token, we also want to make sure that use good business sense and apply good judgment in making an effort.
We’ve created some innovations that have made a huge difference for an individual customer where it started, but then we’ve been able to expand it so that many of our customers around the world now benefit from that. It’s very compelling. When we can use these examples internally and externally, it shows that we’re not just sitting there watching the world go by. We’re trying to create new ideas, capabilities, or tools that can help our customers be more efficient, more productive, and create more value for their own strategic priorities.
HD: The same ends up having to sell this twice in a way. The first person they’re trying to sell is their own knowledge, what they’ve learned about the customer, and the fact that the customer is at the center of everything that they’re thinking about and doing. We’re not here to tell you what to do. We’re here to help understand where we can deliver the most value to you. When you get that point, then you’ve got to go back to your own company and sell it to whatever group of experts you need to round up to become part of the solution.
RD: It’s absolutely not a cookie-cutter approach. The whole idea is if you’re a good SAM, whether you’re at Zurich or any other company, part of your competency and your expertise is to develop the ability to navigate your own organization. Know, “How do I get access to the right people? How do I get access to the right sources of expertise?” Also, within the customer, “How do I encourage the customer to share their perspective with me that they may not want to tell the Wall Street Journal or tell whatever journalists out there whatever the story is?”
You have to develop confidence and trust between you and the customer so that they’re willing to share some insights with you that can help you be more effective at rallying your own company to rise to an opportunity but you have to be a great business person to understand what are the costs? What are the resources involved? Who needs to be involved? What’s the timeline? Who needs to do what? Can we have a go-no-go phase?
In other words, we don’t have to dive in completely. Maybe we have phases to see how does this proceed so that we can ensure that we’re on the right track? All of this, whether internally or externally, requires the ability to manage expectations so that people aren’t expecting something that may not happen. Sometimes when you’re being an entrepreneur or you’re trying to create new value, we don’t know for sure what the outcome is going to be.
The whole idea is, does the customer, and your internal people trust the idea and the process enough to give it a chance, think about it in steps, and understand that if it turns out that the opportunity we thought was there doesn’t materialize, it doesn’t look like it can work, we can kill it and kill it quickly. However, if it looks like it’s working, let’s stick with it. Let’s execute it, bring it to market, and make it work.
When we do that, that way, if one idea doesn’t work, you can always come up with another one. Whereas if you put too much weight on something and you say, “It’s going to work,” when the signs are that it’s not, you’d be much wiser to say, “Unless we can shape this slightly differently or do something slightly differently, we’re better off killing the idea.” Also, getting the customer agreement together says maybe we need to either shift it, reshape it, or shelve it.
HD: That’s the strategist part of you or your ability to separate yourself from what you’re doing and just look back. Clear your mind of all and say, “Is this going to work? Are we headed in the right direction?” If you weren’t, don’t wait for the customer necessarily to tell you that it’s not.
RD: Customers have always told us, “Be transparent. Be clear. Can I count on you? Can you deliver?” If you could be clear and upfront and say, “Here, I can deliver. Trust me. I’ll come through. Here, I’m not sure. Let’s try and let’s see,” or, “Here, no. We don’t have this capability. We just can’t do it.” That way, at least they know if they can count on you or not because the idea is it’s a long life.
We are in a relationship business. We need to protect each other and help each other. You want to live to play again another day and not gamble too heavily on things where you’re risking the relationship or maybe somebody will look bad at the customer level, which would be bad or within our own company. We’re trying to push people to deliver their maximum, but do it in a thoughtful way.
[bctt tweet=”You must be transparent and clear about what you can deliver and manage expectations to build trust and protect relationships.” via=”no”]
HD: I hadn’t thought about this exactly in this way. I was with Schneider Electric for 35 years, so everybody needs electricity. Everybody needs insurance more because the risks are much bigger. It’s huge, in fact. That in a way is a fascinating thing because in large factories, manufacturing companies, and any of the businesses that are out there, there are a lot of different things that can go wrong.
It’s absolutely true. In Zurich in, we’re involved with over 90% of the Fortune 500 and over 80% of the Global 500. We deal with most of the largest companies in the world in some manner, some very deeply, and others a little less so but in any case, the point is that risk is our business and all companies are trying to determine to understand what’s their risk profile. We are trying to help them understand their risk tolerance. How can we help them manage risks? All of that fits in with the landscape we’re working with. What makes it continually interesting as the world goes through and it’s a changing risk landscape. Also, the interconnectivity of risks is enormous. You see this in everyday life, whether it’s individuals or businesses.
HD: Another aspect of this is that just sitting here thinking about it, one thing that you’ve got to have to be in the insurance business is people that quantify the value, quantify the risk or the value, or the risk and the value to make sure that it’s all coming together and that it makes sense. That too is a real skill.
RD: That’s one of our core competencies. That’s why I say that our core competency is risk as a company. The whole point is we have to be able to evaluate risk, understand risk, and price risk but also we’re very solution-oriented. It’s not simply a matter of diagnosing the thing or coming up with some quantitative answer. It’s also trying to help the customer understand, under what circumstances could we help you? How can we come up with either a structure or a way to help you manage your risk, transfer your risk, or avoid losses?
A lot of it is avoiding losses by being more risk-aware and smarter about how you go about doing things. That’s why the breadth of propositions we do, some of them are products that are taking risk, but other things we do are many services that are helping companies try and anticipate the risk. Also, understand the risk and minimize the chances of having something go wrong.
In the climate arena as the world is going through increasing catastrophes, etc., that’s been a huge area of growth for us and it’s one of the areas of deep competency for us where we have experts in trying to understand the changing climate. What does it mean and what does it mean for the risk profile for different companies?
Internal Customers
HD: Let’s talk a little bit more about the internal customer. I bring this up, and you’ve heard me say this before, but I love to ask when I’m in a room full of SAMs. Who’s your toughest customer? Your external customer or your internal customer? I’m 100% so far after all these years, it’s always the internal customer. There are things that you have to do.
When we talked about this before, you brought up the concept of building roads and bridges internally to streamline the process. Could you talk a little bit more about that? What does it take to be able to have the patience and the right mindset internally to be able to get the support that you need so that you can bring it to your customer and make things happen?
RD: I think that a SAM can’t know everything. A SAM needs to be able to have a network that they have established within their own company, that when something comes up and they’re either a little lost or they’re not sure which way to go, they can turn to somebody and say, “You know this area. What do you think of this? Does this make sense?” This whole issue of alignment, one of the big things that SAM talks about and all SAMs, no matter which company you’re in, is how do you align with your organization? How do you get your organization aligned behind you to be able to deliver the total value your company can deliver?
It’s because alone, you can’t do anything but the problem is if you’re out talking to your customer and you have a discussion in your giving the impression you can do things, but you go back to the office or your company and the company says, “I’m not going to do that.” Now, you put yourself between a rock and a hard place because you created a certain expectation. It’s much better to develop your network internally, get to know more people, and develop a relationship with them.
The way you do that is you don’t always ask for things. Not everybody there is there to serve you. The question is, what value are you bringing as the SAM to your colleagues? It’s a two-way street. If your job is to know the customer so well, how can you take the insights that you’re learning? How can you take the knowledge? Also, the SAM is generally the only person in the company for whatever company it is, whether it’s Zurich or others, that’s taking a total customer view. That’s looking at all of the products and services and all of the capabilities.
All of the things we’ve done in the past, maybe some of them didn’t work. Maybe we’ve lost some business in the past. We’ve gained some new business. They have a total view of the story so they can help individuals within their own company understand the nature of the overall relationship and how their piece of the pie fits in. You’re providing context and nobody else can provide context like a SAM because nobody else is making the time and effort to do this.
It’s not a natural act within a lot of companies because we generally are a line of business or silo-oriented. When you talk about bridges and tunnels, to me, the SAM is cutting across all of our businesses, all of our silos, all of our capabilities, and all of our geographies. Also, navigating to include whoever they need to and trying to provide the flow of information in a structured and organized manner so it makes sense and that it’s understandable.
The recipients go, “Thank you, Harvey, for showing me the whole picture. I didn’t realize we had that big a relationship with Company X. I didn’t realize that we had been doing business with them for 40 years or 27 years.” We have certain customers in Zurich that we’ve done business with for over 100 years. We’re a 150-year-old company. We’re very proud of it. Longevity is very important to us because it’s all to do with lifetime customer value and continuity.
Also, to be able to do this over multi-generations means that we must have had a lot of people who did the right things but you always need to live up to earn your place today. The fact that you have a history of doing business with a customer, you can’t rely on it that it’s going to guarantee you future years of doing business. You need to be earning your place every day.
[bctt tweet=”You need to be earning your place every day.” via=”no”]
By reminding your teammates that they have to live up to the best your company can deliver and that you’re trying to provide value to them so that they look good to their bosses, to the management team overall, and to the customer, but also you’re critiquing them. You’re kicking the tires and you’re testing things out to make it better so that when you’re going in front of the customer, the experience you’re delivering for that customer is going to be at a high level because you’ve prepared the team, they have an idea of what to expect. Everybody can feel good.
All of this does not mean you’re always saying, yes. There are times when you will not deliver what the customer wants or it doesn’t make business sense to do something. The question is, “How do you do that in an effective way so that people understand that it doesn’t mean you don’t love them?” It just means you’re not going to do this particular thing or at least not in this way.
HD: I thought of this too, and I think I know the answer to this. If they’ll be engaging the executive sponsor, I would imagine that most of your or all of your strategic accounts have an executive sponsor assigned to them, right?
RD: Not all of them, but they all have executive engagements. This is a subject I do love, and I’m happy you brought it up, Harvey because I think that multi-level contact between a supplier and their customer, why does an executive at the customer want to meet with you? Everybody’s busy. Our executives are busy. Their executives are busy so there needs to be a reason to get together.
If you have a meaningful relationship, it’s up to the SAM and the team to come up with a compelling reason why person X in our company would like to meet person X at your company. What are they going to talk about? What’s the purpose? If it’s just to deal with a transaction, then isn’t that why the SAM and whoever they’re dealing with are dealing with a transactional level?
Either it’s because there’s some insight we can share some value, we can offer some perspective, some benchmarking, or we have become such important partners to each other that it’s important for us to know each other. It’s because that way, we can figure out, if is there more we can do to support you because you’re a very important customer to us or one day if things go wrong, it’s good for us to know each other because then we’ll be able to solve it, whatever the issue is.
If we’re dedicated to each other and we get to know each other, we’ll be able to pick up the phone and speak to each other, and it won’t be the first time we’re speaking to each other. There are many reasons it makes sense. The problem is that it doesn’t always happen, whether it’s at our company or other companies so you have to make it happen. The SAM has to help identify what are those opportunities.
Back to your point about executive sponsorship, we do have an executive sponsorship program and a number of our top customers around the world have dedicated executive sponsors. That program has worked very well for us for many years and it’s all part of being customer-centric. Again, to be focused on the customer and think about how can we help bring value to the customer.
HD: I’m sitting here and your passion is so palpable. I can feel it. I know that you care about the customers, your customers. I was just thinking about your comment that we have customers that we’ve had for 100 years. Who’s got that? How many companies are there that have been around for 100 years?
RD: That’s why the key, Harvey, is to remind ourselves all the time that if we have 100, we want to get to 101, 102, 103, and never to take it for granted. That issue of being awake, being creative, always thinking about adding more value, and not resting on your laurels, that attitude is necessary so that the customer feels it. They see it.
It’s not just text and everybody can say nice things, but they have to have the experience of seeing that you are bringing new ideas, you’re bringing the best you can deliver. I always say to our SAMs, your job is to deliver the very best possible answer Zurich can deliver. As long as you’ve done that, and as long as you’ve kicked the tires and you’ve done whatever internal navigation you need to, you’ve thought it through, what more can you ask for? That needs to be the mindset.
SAMA
HD: At the risk of being a little self-serving, I’d love to be able to get a reflection from you on SAMA and what you’ve gotten out of SAMA. You joined Sam in 2007. I know we’ve gotten a lot from you and benefited from the relationship, but I would love to get an assessment of how you stuck with us.
RD: When I first joined or became aware of SAMA, one of our executives told me about it and asked me and suggested I become involved, which I did. Right from the beginning, I found it fascinating because first of all, to be able to deal with people who are all dealing from different industries, and different companies. They’re all dealing with their most important customers and trying to determine how to hold onto them. How do I develop the relationship further? How can we grow together? How can we innovate and co-create value together?
Whatever the industry is, whatever the company is, we’re all dealing with similar issues because all large companies have what they would consider strategic customers. What I found fascinating is by listening to the webinars, and accessing the information that SAMA provides, I’ve been able to continually learn. I’ve been able to be motivated by what I hear and see others doing to see what’s possible. How far can you go?
It’s inspiring to see the talent that’s out there around the world and all these different companies and how they do things. The key that’s interesting is I’ve presented at most of the SAMA conferences over the last few years or so. What’s interesting is that the reason I do it is because I’m interested in sharing our insights and our value. Also, through that, I learn because I focus on a subject but then I go to lots of other presentations.
I’ll give you a couple of examples that come to mind as you mentioned it. You’ve had different speakers that have just been terrific, but one that comes to mind was Tim Riesterer from Corporate Visions, who made this presentation on something called a Bias to the Status Quo. It’s the bias to the status quo that many customers and many buyers that customers have. What I found so interesting is this proclivity that people who are making decisions have to stick with what they have even if it’s subconscious.
They have this tendency, “I don’t want to take the risks,” not to be exposed to make a decision to change something because it may not live up to whatever you thought it would, etc. What Tim had talked about is the fact that you need to differentiate yourself and overcome that kind of status quo bias by giving such a compelling reason, such a differentiation that somebody has to stop and take you seriously and say, “This could add a lot of value.” You have to also reinforce the fact that it’s safe, that it will make it work, and that that will reduce the risks of change.
That applies not only to new business acquisitions, but the same thing on how you hold onto a customer and the whole retention story, which is slightly different, but has some of the same principles that you wanted to work in your favor in that case that people will stay with you and give them reasons to do so. That’s one example. Another one is it happens that I was asked by one of my colleagues in the UK about what information could I share with them to do with artificial intelligence.
I logged on to the resource library at SAMA, which I’ve used many times over the years but what I appreciated is SAMA has invested a lot of effort to make it more user-friendly. I popped in artificial intelligence and it gave me four outstanding resources that were exactly what I was looking for. The two that I chose to share with my colleague, one was a Velocity article from last year, and another one was a podcast you did Harvey on artificial intelligence which hit the mark exactly.
These are examples of the kinds of things that keep us fresh, that even for somebody like me who’s been in the business for a lot of years, I think I have a good handle on how it all works, but I continue to learn new things. I’m willing to share my insights with others because I get a lot of value by getting others to share their insights with me.
HD: I’ve had a lot of conversations with Libby Souder from SAMA about lifelong learners, and, Ron, you are a lifelong learner. I can feel it. What you did here, it would be easy enough to say, “I’ll let one of the young guys go check this out,” or send somebody to go do some research. Maybe they’ll figure it out. It’s like, “No.” You’re riding on top of it.
RD: I think the thing is that when we talked about the bridges and tunnels and how you develop relationships, my attitude is I’m always willing to make the effort to be responsive, be accessible. I make an effort to make it clear that I’m personally invested in helping people get what they need but part of that is because when I want something, I want them to help me.
Also, I want to prove through my authentic interests in them and in what we’re trying to do as a company that we keep the bar very high in terms of how we perform. We walk the talk. That it’s not something that’s a textbook thing. We need to do this for our customers, but we need to do it for each other internally, and that kind of thing models and tries to encourage the kind of behavior we want to be a truly responsive customer-oriented company.
HD: Is it fair to say that in your experience watching all of your SAMs and personally getting involved with these customers, the more you give, the more you get?
RD: Absolutely. I think that everybody needs to be coached. I like to be coached. Other people like to be coached. The question is, how do you do it constructively? How do you do it in a way that doesn’t destroy how somebody feels or their self-image? I think, again, through SAMA and through the idea and our model at Zurich of how we try and do it is to try and continually improve our capabilities and people will make mistakes.
We will not always win deals or have renewals, etc. It doesn’t always work in our favor, although I would say it often works in our favor, and it often does because we try and think it through and do the right things upfront to heighten our probability of success. However, by the same token, we learned from our lessons. There are lessons learned in what went wrong and what could we have done better?
I think being open-minded, being humble, and being teachable are all principles for any SAM anywhere, no matter what level you’re at, whether you’re brand new or whether you’re more mature in the job. You mentioned, a lifelong learner. If you’re open-minded, and if people think that you’re open-minded, they’ll tell you things. They’ll share insights with you and they’ll tell you how they feel. If they think you’re close-minded, they’re not going to take either the effort or the risk of telling you something because you want to be listened to People want to feel that you care and that you authentically care and you’re not just making believe you care.
HD: Thank you so much for sharing all this with us. It’s a wealth of knowledge and information and learnings from you that is hard to even imagine exceeding it. It’s incredible the career that you’ve had, the amount of time that you’ve spent in this industry, and how you’ve risen from being one of those people going into the customer rising up to being the person who’s helping them all get better.
RD: It’s a joy. I love what I do. Again, I think one of the keys to success for any of us is we have the needed support within our company. I think that’s a key ingredient for anybody. The reason I’m motivated and I love what I’m doing, and I think we’re good at what we do. We appreciate the SAMA award we received this year, the Excellence Award. That makes us proud and wide because our top management, our CEO, and all of the top executives believe in all the things I’m talking about. We get encouragement and support so therefore they invest the time and effort in us. They help us be trained, but they expect us to be top-level.
They expect us to be very good at executing and helping guide the company. The other thing is that, like all companies, we want to do things that help contribute to our own profitability. We’re very motivated not only by the top line but also the bottom line, which means when we look at customer management, we try and look at it and see how can we make good business decisions that are good for our customers, good for us. If it’s not working out, what do we need to change to put it on a better path? Also, over what time period? What are the steps we need to take?
To have the strong skills, the ability to think this through, and to know that management demands a lot from us and pushes us to meet the expectations that are set for us. However, by the same token, they have our back and they want us to be successful. They believe in the customer management principles. All of that allows us to work in an environment that is highly motivating. Again, the SAMA world helps us because it helps us continue to develop our skills and abilities.
HD: That kind of support is so important. I hope that they know that there’s not that many that do it that well.
RD: Hopefully, they’ll be reading this podcast and then they’ll hear all the good things I said about them because, at the end of the day, they earned it. Just like I said about earning your time with a customer. Internally, we have to earn their trust. But we also are grateful for the trust and the appreciation because that makes a big difference in our ability and the customers can see it. When the customers go to our major events or other things, they can see that we walk the talk and that our senior executives are interested in what we’re doing that supports the model.
However, by the same token, they have high expectations of our own ability to live up to our promises and for us not to create damage and promise things that we can’t deliver or to say things that aren’t aligned with our values. We have to live up to the expectations and we appreciate the support like hopefully SAMs in all companies. They need the support of their management to be able to be effective and efficient.
HD: You’re walking with them every step of the way. It isn’t like you suddenly hit a point and there’s a purchase order or money exchange hands to be able to do a deal. It doesn’t stop there. That’s where it starts.
RD: That’s the thing that’s so interesting, Harvey, is that if you’re too transactionally oriented and you’re too self-serving in what you do as a company, whoever the company is. Also, you’re only interested and you wake up when all of a sudden it’s time for renewal or a new business opportunity, but the rest of the time you can’t be found. That’s not going to cut it. You have to be in the game continually always trying to determine, “Are we living up to servicing expectations? Do we have a problem anywhere around the world? Are there other things we can do to help you the customer in the things we already are doing together or in new things?”
[bctt tweet=”If you’re too transactionally oriented and self-serving as a company, that’s not going to cut it. You got to be in the game.” via=”no”]
However, not everything has to be generating extra money or new revenue or sometimes services. The initiatives we have with the customer do nothing extra for us. They help the customer. We’re not going to make any more money from it but that’s part of creating the value in the relationship. I think not being too transactionally oriented is very important in a relationship business.
Closing
HD: I think that’s a great place to stop. We could talk for hours, Ron, but thank you for your time. We are certainly very grateful for all you do to help SAMA and the SAMA community. I will say this. You said it yourself, but congratulations on winning your second Mature Best Program of the Year. It’s a pretty stiff competition out there for that and to do it twice is admirable. We can tell just from this discussion that we’ve had why it happens.
RD: We’re so proud of it. Not only are we proud of it, but also when it’s not purely our industry that you’re looking at what we do compared to many other industries. That makes us even more proud that our methods, our practices, and our business model, under scrutiny, stand up and get this kind of recognition. It makes us all feel good about what we’re doing and we appreciate it. Thank you very much, Harvey.
HD: Thank you. It’s such a pleasure. See you down the road.
Important Links
- Zurich Commercial Insurance
- Ron Davis – LinkedIn
