Finding Inner Clarity to Better Serve Your Clients

We all crave safety. 

In fact, this desire for a sense of safety, security, and assuredness in this world drives all of our day-to-day and long-term decisions. 

And the reason we crave safety so desperately is because we are all utterly afraid. 

And when life is good, the sun is shining, homes are intact, and businesses are providing for their families – maybe even an entire community – then YOUR insurance products give your clients the safety they desire. And they hold it gently.

But when catastrophe strikes and their entire worlds – and those of the ones they care most about – are turned upside down, that is your opportunity to be their hero because they have entrusted you with their sense of safety, security, and assuredness in this frightful world. 

But do you show up as the hero?

Be honest – there’s no judgment in your answer.

I get the realities of running a business in a huge industry, the economy of which in the US alone likely trumps that of entire nations. Nothing is “just that simple.” But if we just answer the question as “more yes or more no,” what’s your answer?

Is your normal response one that would quickly and empathetically restore a sense of safety in this catastrophic world to that customer? Or Not?

What would it mean to them if you did? What would that mean to your business if you did?

What could an entire industry that operated this way mean for entire communities – or larger – if you all did?

Which quickly begs the immediate question – “Sounds great. But how?”

In my two-decades plus career in sales and marketing, I only spent two of those years working directly in the insurance industry. They also happen to be the past two years. So while my insurance industry experience is roughly 10% of my total career, it is very fresh in my mind.

That’s actually not entirely correct; my first “job” out of college in a professional capacity, was working for a financial services company where I sold, among other products, term life insurance. It was a fully commission position, and my real opportunity to make any money was in hiring and training other sales people.

This was certainly not what I envisioned during my four years at college. I was a History Major with an Education minor and had plans to teach secondary social studies and coach basebool and football. I decided not to follow that pursuit in my last semester and, as I think many sales professionals do, I began a career in sales because I was qualified for it.

It didn’t last long – I wasn’t very successful – but I recall being very excited about the idea of building a tem, being the “coach,” teaching other people how to succeed. It was a bit premature, of course; but I loved the picture of it.

And that love of teaching and coaching and building up people was, forever after, somehow part of my “day job.” Whether I was a sales person training my peers, or a National Director training all sales new hires, or a VP of Marketing, building a team from scratch, filling positions I had just recently dreamed up and somehow having the nerve to “coach and lead” them towards my vision. It’s always been in me – it’s always BEEN me, and I never even knew it.

And that’s the backdrop for what I want to share with you – an audience of insurance professionals. I have not spent a lot of time in your industry, and yet I know what people – insureds, your customers – desire and crave at their very core.

It’s the same things we all crave. But in the moment where your customer has been a victim of catastrophe, those cravings become urgent, dire, immediate needs. They are as necessary as air itself. Whether their home was ravaged by a hurricane or wildfire, or if their business and all it’s inventory was decimated by a tornado – is irrelevant.

Safety and Wholeness.

If you want to truly serve your customers in their greatest time of need – which only serves to strengthen their trust in you and thus, your shared business relationship – then you need to get very clear on where you have opportunities in your workflows and business operations to meet their need, to provide reassurance, to respond to their fear the way you’d hope someone could respond to your own fear. And the only way you can get that kind of clarity, is to go deep within yourself.

Because their pain and fear and suffering, is no different than any pain and fear and suffering you’ve experienced yourself. 

Knowing yourself in a more whole and authentic way is to know every other person in a more whole and authentic way.

And when we can all start to do that, we can start to reshape industries and communities and lives.

But that kind of inner clarity – while accessible to each and every one of us by virtue of our mere existence – is not easily found without a true, sincere and committed intention to do so.

Our minds, our egos – designed by nature to protect us from harm – are reluctant to simply allow us to “peek behind the screen,” for fear of what changes it may inspire.

Your mind, your ego – the voice that is constantly narrating your life and your thoughts and your experiences inside your head, non-stop – doesn’t like a whole lot of change. 

And the things you learn about yourself, about humans, about your world when you find this deep, inner clarity – often demands a lot of change.

But always, only for the better.

Ask yourself two questions: Do I have the desire to better know myself – my sense of safety and what it’s rooted in? My sense of wholeness and how fragile it might be? Because you could just as easily be a victim of catastrophe as your customers – and being in your industry, I know you know this! And second, is there any rational reason that having a greater sense of clarity around how to best serve my customers – for their interests and my company’s – doesn’t make sense?

Nope, I agree. Let me help you learn how to truly find that inner clarity. It will change your business – and your life. Guaranteed.