Jonathan Lohman, insurance and benefits producer and marketing specialist for Lohman Cos. Insurance, Real Estate and Benefits
Years at company: 10
College: Illinois State University, Katie School of Insurance '07

How can employers retain young talent?
Retention is based on who you choose. Be selective and choose someone you know will fit in to the office atmosphere. Don’t hire someone who does hard selling and expect them to fit in with your soft sell sales force. They will disturb your atmosphere by making 150 phone calls a day while your current sales force makes 10 great phone calls a day and spends the rest of the day in the field. You need to make it fun, whether it's running small daily contests or promoting a life with the office outside of the office like going to a game or out for dinner just to get to know each other. Also, contrary to popular belief, today’s generation is very much in to giving back to the community and doing service work. Engage the office to do something and that will create unity. You need to be wary of what your competition is offering employees like yours. If you don’t, your employees will find out anyway. Good employees are hard to come by and if they offer something more competitive, be able to show why they should stay with you. The average young person is switching jobs up to nine times in their career in comparison with two times 25 years ago.

Do your top carriers recruit young workers?
No, but they do recruit middle-aged employees.

What's your mantra for success?
Work without limits. A pause in negotiation is worth more money than a response. Most of all, if you talk to anyone, you’ve met a potential client or referral partner. Treat all people as if they are worth a million dollars.

What are your future goals in this industry?
I’d like to see the terrible hiring practices of a few companies get scrutinized and done away with. Hiring as many people as you can just to get a leads list out of them and taking a good percentage of their commission is not setting them up for success and puts a sour taste in the rest of the pool of which to choose the best agents from. If you are interested in insurance and are invited to go to a weekly or monthly “workshop,” that is not insurance and it never will be. The right agents are sought after, have a one-on-one interview, have a training phase, and finally shadow someone before they are put out on their own. I want to see more agency principals to encourage association participation in their fields for the younger agents, because without those, your agents will feel undervalued and underage. With those associations they get to find out that there are young agents out there and they can share their struggles and successes. It is a major resource. If you find yourself questioning whether to join an association because you are meeting your competition, then you probably haven’t realized how much business there is out there that nobody is touching. I’d like to see our industry stop getting shoved under the bus for many shortfalls of a nation’s problems so I believe advocacy will be more crucial than ever for us in the coming years.

How do you balance work and personal life?
My work life can’t take more than 12 hours a day or I’ll be burnt out before I’m 40. My rationalization is there are 24 hours in a day and half is spent working (12), then another third is spent sleeping (8), and finally the last 4 hours are spent for personal time and relaxation. The weekends are reserved for working at most 3 hours on Saturday and doing social things. If you can add clients that are fun to be with on the weekends then more power to you because that is more time you can save during the week.

What is an important lesson you learned when joining a professional working environment?
Teamwork. Teamwork is only as strong as it’s weakest link, it’s only as fast as it’s slowest person, it’s only as efficient as the laziest person, and most of all it starts and ends with you. You determine the attitude, the rate, and the efficiency as the leader of any project. I once had a huge proposal that needed to be done the next day and we’d barely scratched the surface so I offered to take out the first two people who finished their work and got a certified review from someone else on the team. I also put the caveat that everyone had to participate so we didn’t have someone give up right away. There was a win for everyone because they all worked together, they all checked over everything, and although only two got to go to lunch, everyone got dessert.

Where do you hope to take your career? What direction would you like your career to go?
In the future I have large goals and see myself running a very large firm in a different direction than where the current agency system is going.

Have you ever experienced any "generation gap" issues with your carriers in terms of personal interaction or the products they offer?
No. I think most of the products are standard and meant for a broad audience. Personalization will be key to getting new customers in the future. I don’t think the idea of selling the property plus or liability plus packages with 50 coverages will be around forever. I believe we will need to allow the consumer to choose 25 coverages for $100 or all of them for $250 so that the consumer feels as though they’ve made decisions in their insurance. Most of the coverages are just fluff but if we were to allow them to take out the fluff to make their coverage what they wanted, I think it would help in the sale. If you asked a lawnmower to mow your yard and he offered you that but gave you the option to buy the plus package and offered to do your weed eating, dandelion spraying, weed spraying, and tree trimming for $200 but you didn’t have dandelions, weeds, or a tree to trim then you wouldn’t want to buy the packack, but it would still make you feel like you were involved in the process. Better yet, if or when you do need them or hear someone talking about needing them, who do you think you’re going to be calling or recommending?

What skills do you think young agents will need in 2012?
Adaptation, confrontation, and negotiation. You need to adapt to the fast changing pace of the social norms and means of communication as the young person in the office. Principals will be looking to you for information. Even if you aren’t in to it, you still have the best access to that knowledge and will know more, more quickly than the rest of the office. Confrontation is key, because you will be butting heads with your principals wanting to do the next big thing, you’ll be running into your companies with different ideas of where they want the business to go, and most of all you’ll be running into regulation knocking at the door at every step of the way. There seems to be regulation on the regulations now, just as much as there are exclusions to an exclusion in an insurance policy. Finally, the art of negotiation is changing from trying to find a middle ground to helping the other side think they have just a slightly higher hand than yours. Nobody thinks splitting things down the middle is a win anymore, let alone a “win/win” situation. They still want to feel that they got a great deal and you are there to highlight what makes things great to make them think they are winning.

What do you see young agents struggle with in their first years in this industry? What advice do you have?
What to do. Most agents were thrown in to the pond to see if they sank or swam and expect you to do the same. You have to let them know they will be more profitable and so will you if you get to learn from their mistakes by talking about them rather than doing them. You also have a better chance at giving the company and the industry a better name with younger advisors. Find other advisors that are in the same situation and join a Young Professionals Network so you can see what other people your age are doing in their industries. I can’t tell you how many contacts I’ve made and different sales ideas have come from different industries. I’ve traded sales and marketing ideas like baseball cards with people in other industries because you usually aren’t competing for the same money.

What sales strategies worked for you in 2011?
When I sell an auto policy, I start the service right at the sale. I give them five business cards. I have them stick one in their wallet so they never forget my info for questions. I tell them to have one on hand in case they ever feel like I could help someone similar to them. Then I have them stick three in the auto insurance ID sleeve we give them in case they get in an accident. One goes to the police officer for information or to see if they need an update because their insurance card is out date. The other one goes to the other party involved in the accident. The last one is to give to any passengers that might have been in the car with them. If I take care of everything correctly, I may have made a bad situation a lot easier for everyone and picked up clients from anyone in either vehicle. I then tell them if they have a camera phone, to take a picture of the auto insurance card so that if they ever get pulled over and forget it, they can show the officer or the tow truck operator their information. Arizona is the only state that is approved by law to have electronic proof of insurance, but I know of plenty of clients that have been pulled over and the officer thought showing the phone picture was as good as a piece of paper.

Jonathan Lohman was featured in the June 2012 issue of AA&B. He is a producer for Lohman Cos. Insurance.

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Jonathan Lohman Continues Young Agent Discussion - nGI

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