From a Master Agent's Perspective: Comfort Zone Downfall

From a Master Agent's Perspective: Comfort Zone Downfall: "Because MicroCorp is a Master Agency, we support a large Agents base. Every now and again we will see an order come across our desk for a co..."

From a Master Agent's Perspective: Retention 101, part I

From a Master Agent's Perspective: Retention 101, part I: "Everyone seems to have their own system for Retention. Some people use spreadsheets or Outlook and others just wing it. But in today's eco..."

Retention 101, part I

Everyone seems to have their own system for Retention.  Some people use spreadsheets or Outlook and others just wing it.  But in today's economy winging is definitely a bad business decision and even relying on a spreadsheet can be pretty risky.  At MicroCorp, because we are a Master Agency that supports Agents nationwide, we have spent a lot of time developing tools and systems to help not only our Agent Partners but also our Retention Team manage all of the nuances of Retention. Because retention has so many parts, I am going to break down retention into several steps in my next few blogs.

To start it is important to know what the Carrier's policy is for retention.  Some Carriers like New Edge Network have contracts that auto-renew.  So unless your customer sends a cancellation letter in advance, their contract will renew for a year at the same rates. Paetec has a team who call out to existing Agent accounts reterming them for the Agents.  That is a real win/win for both Paetec and the Agent.

At the total opposite end Carriers like CenturyLink stop paying commissions to Agent on accounts that fall out of contract.  There are even a few carriers who will renew your customers on their own making the customer's "direct" house accounts leaving the Agent high and dry.  So to protect your business you really have to know exactly what the Carriers rules are on retention.

What to look for in a Carriers Retention Program:
* How early can an Agent reterm a customer?
* What is the Carrier's policy on auto-renewing?
* What happens to an Agent's commissions if the customer goes month to month?
* Are there any potential risks if a customer does not reterm,  like do pricing promo's fall off increasing a customer's rate.
* Does the Carrier have a program to renew a customer on their own, cutting the Agent out of the relationship.

So do you know what all your Carrier's policies are for Retention?

Comfort Zone Downfall

Because MicroCorp is a Master Agency, we support a large Agents base. Every now and again we will see an order come across our desk for a company that we already know has been sold by another one of our Agents.  The first Agent will have the local and LD business; the second Agent brings us the data network.  And of course, being a Master Agent discretion is imperative, so we never say anything to either Agent.  We do have one large customer that has three different parts of their business being sold by three different Agents.  Our commission team loves that. 

So recently curiosity got the best of me and I started asking the first agent (Agent A) about the customer. 

1. How did he get start working with the customer?
2. How often does he speak with the customer? 
3. How solid is the relationship?

I asked the second agent (Agent B) the same questions.  It was interesting while Agent B knew of Agent A, Agent A was totally unaware of the Agent B.  The second agent (Agent B) was using an auxiliary product, fax2mail, to get his foot in the door and was talking to the customer about web conferencing.  He got in because Agent A never asked the customer about those needs. Agent A only worried about Legacy Voice products - his comfort zone. 

Unfortunately Agent A only spoke to the customer once a year, never did an audit of services and never talked about the customer’s needs.  He got into the company because of a friendship, but was not really bringing value.  He doesn’t know it, but he is about to lose a customer.  So my question to you – why do so many agents leave so much on the table??? And how can I help them break that habit?