Jani De La Rosa might not be the biggest, the youngest, the oldest or the best. But she's clearly made enough of an impact to earn this year's Broker of the Year award from Benefits Selling.
Not bad for a college dropout - not to mention one who went to school hoping to become a dental hygienist.
"I got into the business while I was attending college," De La Rosa recalls of her foray into the insurance business. "I replied to an ad I saw in the paper because I decided to go off on my own, which meant I had to pay for college by myself and was looking for a full-time job.
"The ad was for a clerical position. I got the job and ended up staying there a couple for years. I liked the money and got promoted; From that point, I just stayed in the industry. Every time I switched positions or switched companies, I was getting a higher promotion with more money."
So, yeah, she freely admits that what drove her original aspiration and her eventual career was the cold hard cash. "I was very driven by money," she laughs. Her schedule soon shifted from that of a full-time student to that of a full-time employee, which, of course, soon began to include overtime hours.
"I started enjoying the paycheck," she admits. A promotion followed - which led to more money - and after a year or two of that, De La Rosa decided to choose between the two paths.
"I was so involved in my job, that I said, OK, I think I'm going to take a year off college and I'll finish up next year when I'm not so busy at work," she remembers. "It never happened. I never got my bachelor's degree. So, it's kind of a bummer, but I also found my passion. I ended up finding where I was supposed to be in life and that is employee benefits. Sounds kind of corny, but..."
Ironically, that passion ended up making the money - once her driving force - a little less important. In fact, the secret to her success at Heffernan Insurance Brokers - a house known for its niche business - has been her work with nonprofits. And she's not shy about giving back to them either.
"It spun into all about what I can do for the people who support me, too," she explains. "You know, I have a lot of clients that have been with me for a very long time that have put their trust in me and could be with a different broker if they wanted to. It's so easy to change brokers in this industry and my nonprofits have supported me to the point where I go the extra mile for them."
Benefits Selling: You have a pretty good retention rate. I've got to imagine, especially now, how easy it is to lose people. How do you hang onto clients these days?
Jani De La Rosa: It's hard because my clients tell me they have brokers calling them three times a day. So it's a tough, tough industry right now.
I think I can say honestly I treat all of my clients like they are my only client. If they call me and they need something (and it doesn't matter what they need) it's always super important to them, so I make it super important [to me]. I just make sure they get whatever they need right away.
I know that sounds really oversimplified, but I have some prospects and some clients I have been able to take from other brokers. I've had prospects tell me, "I don't see my broker -- only once a year and it's at renewal time when they are delivering an increase." So I make it a point to build an account service plan, which is about three pages. Every client has one attached to the account.
Within that account service plan, I'm seeing them at least four times a year. I'm seeing them at renewal time; I'm seeing them at what I call midyear (It's a midyear report where I show them the trends and what's going on in the industry); I see them at pre-renewal, which is four months prior to the renewal to give them an estimate of what to expect when they get their renewals (That's what I call my "crystal ball" meeting); Then I see them at renewal time.
So I'm seeing them throughout the entire year. I do that on purpose. Now they can't say, "I only see my broker once a year." I would say 99 percent of my clients greet me with a hug because handshakes are not even part of our repertoire. I've become a personal friend they see at least four or five times a year. I don't send Christmas cards, it's not personal. I'll take my top 10 accounts and I'll either customize something for them, like get a pen set engraved, or send a cookie with their name on it. It costs just as much as a box of See's candy or Christmas cards, but it sets me apart. I try to look for unique things from a personal level.
BS: What other options do you have as far as prospecting goes?
JDLR: I've had some bad luck with account executive positions within my team, so it's kind of pulled me into my client base a little more than I have to for servicing their account. I've had to do that if I want to keep the client, so I've had to play a dual role, which has taken me away from sales.
I also work a lot off of referrals. We have about 80 property and casualty producers at Heffernan, so a lot of those producers refer me business. When they get a sale, they refer me to the benefits side; I would say 50 percent of [referral business] comes from that. Another 25 percent is going to be referrals from current clients or clients who are leaving companies and going into a new company. Then, the smaller portion [is from] www.freeerisa.com or Judy Diamond and pulling nonprofit companies I want to work with within the Bay Area, because I like to stay local first. Then I do a marketing campaign and see what kind of response I get from that. The marketing campaign I think I'm going to focus on next is going to be worksite benefits. Because with our economy and the number of companies that have had to either eliminate or downsize their benefits, we've had to bring in creative solutions to keep the benefits available to employees.
Part of that is voluntary benefits. It might not be 100 percent paid by the employer, but it still offers the benefit at a discounted rate because it's on a group basis. That, to me, is a hot button. I think I can use the voluntary market right now to my advantage.
Also, instead of having the expense of printing something or creating an ad, I can probably get a carrier to partner with me to pick up some of that cost and we can go after some of the same accounts. That's my mini-prospect campaign for the next two or three months.
BS: What do you see as far as the future of this industry, over say the next few years? Are you concerned about health care reform?
JDLR: My feelings on it from six months ago are different than my feelings now. My perception has changed a little bit since laws have actually been passed. In California, we are doing a lot of what [President] Obama has passed anyway, so I wasn't as nervous initially about some of the mandates.
What does worry me is that the carriers are getting concerned about what [reform's] going to do to premiums. Although Obama's whole plan is to make it affordable, the money has to come from somewhere, so we're not sure if there are going to be loads into the premiums for all these mandates that are happening. In turn, the employer is not going to be happy about it when they are given a 10 percent to 15 percent load on their renewal, on [top of] their already 15 percent renewal. That concerns me that it wasn't thought out a little bit better.
The other thing that made me think about is some of my reps are moving onto the broker side, which isn't as big of a concern, but it concerns me as to what they are hearing on the carrier side. With the government coming in and thinking they are going to create their own insurance company, I can imagine that they are not going to allow brokers to represent it.
But all in all, I think employers are going to still need brokers. It's such a cumbersome industry to understand without a broker. If brokers' roles change at all, we might change into more consultants.
But I think there's still a place for me; I think I can migrate. I'm a consultant now anyway.
BS: We talked earlier also that the business for you has been good at Heffernan, despite the downturn. To what do you attribute that success?
JDLR: The company has supported me as a salesperson. I think it's been because it was a newer company when I started it. We were new in benefits. There were a lot of risks they had to take and they had to listen to me, even though it was foreign to Heffernan at the time.
I think now [the benefits division has] kind of grown up within the company. We're not the stepchild anymore. We're still one of the smaller divisions, but we're the most profitable. We've completely turned [the business] around and proven ourselves.
BS: And you had a mentor early on?
JDLR: I had a great mentor who helped me and I still talk to her to this day. She's very proud of what I have been able to accomplish and she actually takes credit for it.
But within the industry, you can take somebody straight out of college and mentor them and take them to appointments, and they can shadow you and see how you would handle a certain situation. I've done this with a couple of producers - I've shown them the ropes. It's very gratifying to see them succeed. If you weren't there to show them how to do A, B, C, all the way through Z in employee benefits, which is the career they chose, then maybe they would have never gotten to Z. Maybe they would have been stuck at D and not even get into sales. Maybe they would've come back into account management or into clerical and not been able to break through because other producers didn't want to help them.
I've grown up in this business, literally. I started straight out of high school, without a college degree and I've gotten to where I'm at now. I look at my career and I'm very proud of what I am able to accomplish. [Mentoring is] a high, I can't even explain it.
BS: What's your advice to someone who wants to get into the business?
JDLR: If they wanted to be in sales, I would say it's an awesome business. It's competitive. Work hard and you'll love your job.
I don't think I would ever discourage anybody. When I was growing up in this business people tried to discourage me. They told me it's a man's world; You better have thick skin because this industry is hard.
That didn't discourage me, but it put thoughts in my head that weren't even true. They weren't even things that I needed to hear. I say work hard, you can make a lot of money, you can make a lot of friends, and you can have a lot of relationships.
