Review CP Manager Hassle Free!
By Bradley Chesnut, President
First, before sharing with you our approach to working with agencies on their automation, let me share my personal guarantee to you:
If any of my staff treats you with anything but respect, call/email me directly and share with me the details of what happened so I can address it personally with the person so this situation doesn't ever occur again.
We're in business because of our clients and so it's expected by everyone on the staff to provide a comfortable, warm, pleasant experience with everyone they work with. Everyone is to portray a company that genuinely cares about their clients, because we do.
A business, all businesses, are nothing without their clients! We take this fact very seriously.
Over the past 40 years of being in business I've always maintained an extremely high level of customer service, the highest of everyone with every company and every vendor I've ever worked with. I expect everyone at Agency AutomationTEAM to strive for the same outcome of maintaining a very high level of customer satisfaction.
Agencies Are Frustrated With Vendor Sales People
I was curious so I did a quick survey and then I talked to quite a few agencies. The end conclusion is consistent... agency owners do not want to deal with a salesperson who is trying to shove their product down their throat. They stated way too many of the other vendors sales reps are too aggressive and forceful, and they didn't like it a bit which has them wanting to avoid reviewing management systems.
Today there's over 40 systems with a lot of sales reps all fighting to get a piece of the limited number of agencies in America. Too many of the vendors sales reps are being way too aggressive making it very uncomfortable for agencies and causing them to just not want to even consider looking at another system because they just simply do not want to go through an ugly sales process.
I don't blame them! Having been a business owner myself for many years starting with my insurance agency in the 1980's I've dealt with my fair share of aggressive, rude sales people. It's not fun.
Agency AutomationTEAM's (AAT) Approach...
There are two approaches to a sales department... Sales Reps or Account Managers.
A sales reps sole job is to make sales. Then once a sale is made they pass the client over to the support department to take care of them from that point on. That doesn't mean they won't continue calling you because they will... to sell upgrades since after all their primary focus is on sales.
An Account Manager manages a territory and continues to work with their clients. Once a sales is made they continue working with the client as a point person and advocate for the client. They are part of a "team" who works to help their client achieve the results they are after with their automation.
Agency AutomationTEAM took the Account Manager approach because it more aligns with our objective and our commitment to our clients. This means your account manager will continue working with you and will be your point person to helping you achieve your automation goals.
Plus, it makes sure they develop a positive working relationship which starts at the first conversation. It holds them accountable to what they say, how they treat an agency and on whether they set proper expectations with a client. By working within a specific territory which is based upon the different states that oversee, it behooves them to be professional and courteous since agencies talk to other agencies in their state and we want you saying great things about us.
Pretty consistently you will find the far more aggressive and rude people calling you are Sales Reps because their relationship with the agency is greatly reduced once the agencies they're working with become a client and are then passed on to the support department. Sales Reps are focused on "making the sale" which becomes their core objective where Account Managers are focused on developing a relationship and building a territory.
If you know me then you'd know how I feel... it's always about the relationship, which is what I teach and promote company wide.
We're Educators
On top of all of this, we are educators. There's a lot to agency automation and agency management systems when it comes to your agency. A lot!
When I designed CP Manager it was from an extensive background in agency automation and a deep knowledge in workflows, productivity strategies, how an agency staff does their work, how an agency owner runs their agency and much more.
Workflows (how you do your job), productivity strategies and business models (how you run different areas of your agency, you have multiple business models) were all very carefully factored into the design of CP Manager. CP Manager takes agency automation to a whole new level.
It's weekly training at the office teaching everyone on the staff about the intricacies of how an agency management system affects an agency in the areas of how they do their work, how they run the agency, to how productive an agency can become and much more. With this knowledge our Account Managers can help agencies see the bigger picture of owning CP Manager and our Support staff can work with our clients in a deeper more effective way to include help guiding them in multiple areas of their agency.
But these aren't topics of conversation other vendors typically want to have with agencies. We do because CP Manager is very strong in the area of creating results for an agency. It was designed based upon workflows and productivity strategies so you'd create measurable results. It also opens up the door to other more efficient business models which we like discussing with agencies.
You see, it's not our objective to just sell software.
It is our objective to help agencies create real measurable results, to work with their clients in a more efficient way and to explore other business models for their agency which could help them run an even more efficient agency. In order to accomplish this our staff needs to be educated on all of the ways CP Manager can affect your agency. It's our objective to help agencies achieve higher levels of success.
You have to remember, I've been a consultant working with agencies since 1989 and this has been my mission all of these years... to do their job more efficiently, be more productive, increase the agencies profits. It should not surprise you that these are key factors in the design of CP Manager.
Working With Prospective Agencies
Like I've shared, you will always be treated with respect.
We also take a position that if you're not interested today, don't burn bridges because there's always next year or the year after that or the year after that. I believe that if you have a great product (this is key) and provide great support and great training somewhere along the way that agency who initially said "no" will eventually say "yes" and become a client. Over the years I've experienced that many times.
But an agency won't consider you down the road if you burn bridges with them! Not if you piss them off by being way too aggressive, being rude and trying to shove your product down their throat... why would they want to go through that again?
If they say no because maybe we don't have a key feature they need, thank them for their time and let them know you'll drop them an email once we have that feature. Be courteous and polite because you're the first representation of the experience they'll have when doing business with AAT and we want that experience to be positive and memorable.
Be a consultant, I tell them. Just ask good questions, listen intently and help them see if CP Manager will solve the problems they're experiencing and meet their automation needs.
Never burn bridges... it will come back to haunt you, I promise.
My account managers are awesome. I know because daily I listen to the conversations they have with prospective agencies. We're all pretty kicked back, relaxed and focused on creating a positive relationship of presenting CP Manager to the agencies we are working with.
Unless you're new to the industry, if you've used an agency management before then you have a pretty good idea of what you're looking for. You at least understand the basics and the foundational purpose of an agency management system which is to help your staff do their job in the least amount of time possible so they can manage as large of a book of business as possible.
That's foundational.
How To Evaluate A Management System
From years of working with agencies helping them to make a good decision on their agency management system I can tell you that there are really great and effective ways to evaluate a system, and there are really bad ineffective ways which practically guarantees you'll make a bad decision.
Rule #1
Here's the first rule (forgive me for being so blunt): Sales people are notorious for over exaggerating the ability of their product with some even straight out lying about it.
Let me give you an example. There's a system which offers downloading but what it does is add a text file to the policy of what was downloaded. It does not update the policy which in my opinion makes it pretty worthless because you have to manually update the policy if you want to keep it current and up-to-date.
Everyone expects downloading to update the policy because this is the very reason we purchase downloading... to keep the policy up-to-date from no effort on your part.
If you ask a sales person for this vendor if they offer downloading they'll say yes. If you end the conversation without pursuing it further you'll be in for a rude awakening if you purchase this system once you realize what exactly downloading is to this system.
I could give you many examples like this.
For years I've pushed a simple strategic approach to reviewing management systems... "show me, don't tell me".
By having the person who's discussing their system with you "show you" how it work (a walk-through) you get to see exactly what it takes to do something. Have them show you what it takes to add a client, to add a policy (including the detail), to add a B-Tran/Invoice, to send an email, to process/handle an endorsement or renewal, or whatever it is that's important to you to see.
As they show you take a look at the steps, observe how they jump throughout the system to do what they're showing you, pay attention to the whole process.
You need to take the process of choosing a system seriously. Know what "results" you're after. Know what business models you want to make sure the system will support. Achieving specific results and supporting your key business models should be the absolute highest priority.
Have a list of features you want in a system and prioritize them by "must have" and "would like to have".
I believe a product should sell itself.
I really do.
But, you need to see they system. You need to take some time and review it. Without a walk-through it's hard to make a determination of whether CP Manager is right or not for your agency.
Once you've gone through a walk-through, if everything meets your approval the next step would be to do a Test Drive. This is where you get to actually use the system for a period of time.
We offer both a 7-day and 30-day Test Drive.
Rule #2
Second Rule: It's not about the price, it's about the systems ability to increase your productivity and help your staff handle their day to day work more efficiently in less time!
A system that cost less but requires 10% more CSR hours to do the same job is actually costing your agency a whole lot more money than what you saved by choosing the lower cost system. What you need to clearly understand is "increased productivity equals increased profitability". Increased productivity and profitability go hand in hand.
There's a balance of increased productivity to a systems price.
To learn more about how increased productivity affects your agency we have an informational piece discussing it... "What Increased Productivity Means To Your Agency".
Unfortunately too many agencies get hung up on the price when what they should really be getting hung up on is:
- How much double-entry a system has... does data flow throughout the system? The more double-entry a system has the less productive your staff will be.
- How a system supports your staff processing policy tasks (workflows)... What are the steps? How many steps? How much jumping around the system does the user have to do? How does the system help you stay on top of it?
- Whether a system is easy or hard to learn and use. The harder a system is to learn and use the less productive your staff will be and the harder the transition will be to move to the new system.
I dig a lot deeper into this topic at "The Big Savings With CP Manager". I encourage you to check it out.
The Process To Reviewing CP Manager
We offer a lot of ways to review CP Manager. Most can be done without even talking to an account manager. There's only a few that require having a conversation with someone. We show you the different ways at our "Review CP Manager" page.
Most require you to share your information with us to access them. Why?
Bluntly, to control who's accessing the information.
Put yourself in my shoes. I've spent over 30 years now in this industry. CP Manager was developed from my extensive background in this industry helping agencies and their CSRs and Producers to do their jobs more efficiently in less time so they could service and work with far more clients and/or prospects each week.
I have a very clear and deep knowledge of productivity strategies, proper workflows and agency automation along with having worked on many of the systems on the market. I'm also a programmer so I understand table structures and programming techniques. All of this combined together gave me a skill-set ideal for designing an agency management system.
Because of my experiences, knowledge and commitment to this industry we have released the first "productivity driven" agency management system. It came at a great cost. It took me a year to write the thousands of pages which comprised of the blue-print and then 10 years to have an advanced programming team write the program.
No vendor has ever invested the time and money we've invested to create a management system. I do not want our exclusive features, strategic design of the system, how we more thoroughly integrated core features like notes and follow ups and attachments and correspondence into the system and numerous other things we did to get into the hands of our competitors. In my shoes, wouldn't you want to protect these things as well?
Just keep in mind, our account managers will be very respectful of you. We're not pushy, we won't try to shove CP Manager down your throat or anything like that. We are focused on building a positive relationship with everyone we talk with.
When we do talk with you we'll simply ask questions to learn what's important to you when considering an agency management system and we'll ask questions to learn what's the best approach for you to review a system. Considering we have a lot of options for reviewing CP Manager, knowing which way to point you would be good.
You see, if you need to make a quick decision we'd recommend one way to review CP Manager versus if you're not in a hurry at all we would suggest another way to review the system. We discuss an efficient way to review CP Manager at the Review CP Manager page.