Five things to consider when
developing a personal brand
By Bill Brooker
As a young insurance agent, you may feel like you’re standing in the shadows of seasoned professionals, trying to find a way to stand out and build your career. The next time you feel that way, stop what you’re doing and recognize that you’ve just experienced the tangible power of a strong personal brand. The knowledge, professionalism, and gravitas of those seasoned professionals is a brand they command and leverage to write more and more business each year.
Your personal brand—how you present yourself, your work, and your values—can be one of the most powerful tools you have in making a name for yourself in this industry. Furthermore, if you want to one day wield a personal brand that leaves other agents feeling the same way, you should start right now. In an industry as competitive as insurance, especially for young professionals, having a personal brand that reflects your values and sets you apart can be a game changer.
Given all the noise around personal branding, here are five things I think you need to consider.
- Personal branding will make or break your book of business. You need to accept that your long-term success as an agent hinges on your personal brand. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself: Do people buy insurance from someone they don’t trust? You already know the answer—of course not.
Trustworthiness is the basic barrier to entry into our industry, and how you build trustworthiness is a significant part of your personal brand. Just look at all the agents out there feverishly building niches. Niches work because branding yourself as an expert in a particular micro-industry or line of business builds trust with insurance buyers.
How are you perceived by your prospects? If you don’t have a personal brand, you are just riding the coattails of your agency’s brand at best; and at worst, you are actively hurting your ability to relate to your prospects. This will inevitably lead to you losing accounts to agents who differentiate themselves on a personal level.
Early in my career, I often felt that buyers perceived me as too young to be trusted with their business insurance. To compensate, I steered conversations toward my background as a claims adjuster or went deeper into the weeds on my proposals. After one such proposal, my future client said, “Wow, you are really thorough!” At that moment, I accepted that thoroughness was part of my brand and began leaning into it during presentations.
- Everything you do (and think) is your brand. I don’t want to sound like one of those marketing people who make personal branding their soapbox, but it’s important to realize that whether you show up 10 minutes early for an appointment or 10 minutes late, it impacts the complex equation of how others perceive you. How well-dressed and groomed you are, how you treat the waitress at lunch, the language you use, how much you talk versus how much you listen—it’s all branding.
In an industry as competitive as insurance, especially for young professionals,
having a personal brand that reflects your values and sets you apart can be a game changer.
If you’re hung up on the word “brand” being a buzzword, think of it as your “impression.” Do you make a good or poor impression? In the world of sales, it’s critical to leave a strong impression on your prospects, peers, and centers of influence. Every action you take during an interaction impacts the impression you leave behind.
After a meeting with a prospect, what are the three or four words that you would want that prospect to use to describe you? That right there should be your brand and everything you do should reinforce those descriptions.
On the mental side, if you think of yourself as someone who writes only $2,000 premium accounts, that’s what you’ll write. If you believe you can write $250,000 premium accounts, you will. This transformation doesn’t happen overnight, but you need to mentally see yourself as capable of achieving your goals. Once you believe in who you are and what you can become, you’ll naturally adopt the habits that will build you into that person. Those habits will, in turn, become key components of your personal brand.
- Start thinking about emotions. Everyone in sales knows that people buy with their emotions. Many sales trainings focus on teaching you how to get the buyer to say “yes.” In reality, what comes first is how the buyer feels about you and the proposal in front of them, which leads to that “yes.”
If you are trying to define your personal brand and struggling to define it, try changing your approach. Instead of writing down words like “sharp, intelligent, thorough, caring, responsible,” ask yourself what emotions you want people to feel when working with you. Personally, I aim to evoke the same emotions you would feel after interacting with a great doctor—somewhere between feeling relieved and impressed.
One way I achieve this is through storytelling. I often share the story of my great-grandfather starting our agency in 1938 and what that legacy means to me. This allows me to be authentic and convey how seriously I take this business and my responsibility to oversee my clients’ insurance policies properly.
Now trust me, I don’t just walk into offices, tell them my agency was founded in the 1930s and walk out with a new client. Being a successful agent is so much more than that and my personal brand is so much more than that. Often times, I will share some really dark and unfortunate claims stories that I hope convey a feeling of seriousness or comfort knowing I have been there and seen those situations first hand.
What stories in your life can you share that convey the emotions you’re striving for? A well told story can turn a small fact about your résumé into a compelling emotion that you can build a brand around.
- Be the person you want to attract. This is similar to dating. If you want to attract someone who values fitness and health, you can’t smoke or sit around all day. If your ideal insurance prospect is a female, Gen Z, college graduate, your brand should appeal to a large percentage of female, Gen Z, college graduates. Look at the successful agents you know who have built strong niches. You’ll see they dress, talk, act, and work in ways that resonate with their ideal clients.
Your personal brand needs to appeal to your target clients. Who does your ideal prospect want to buy from? If they want to buy local, you should be visible at community events. If they want to buy from an expert, you need to create valuable content that showcases your expertise. If they want to buy from someone they can have a beer with, you need to be sociable and engaging.
All the #branding talk out there emphasizes telling your story, but a significant part of personal branding is listening. Listen to the questions your prospects ask. What does that tell you about your personal brand? I was once asked how old I was in back-to-back proposal meetings. Instead of seeing it as an insurmountable hurdle, I asked, “Why do my prospects feel that my age is an important question to ask, and what can I do to mitigate that feeling?” If you’re not listening to your clients, someone else will.
- Remember the big question you’re answering. The single most important question in insurance sales that every agent needs to answer is: “Why should my ideal prospect choose to do business with me instead of my competition?”
Everything you do in your career should be aimed at improving the answer to that question. Personal branding—at its core—is about how you present your answer. You might have a strong answer, but if you can’t communicate it effectively to an insurance buyer, you won’t get the results you want.
You might be just starting out and feel like you don’t have much of an answer yet. That’s okay. The people 25 years into their careers, with overwhelmingly compelling answers to that question, started out just like you. Their personal brand evolved through blood, sweat, and tears. Yours will too.
The key here is that the best personal brands help to answer that all important question. Your personal brand can show people exactly why you are a better agent than the agent down the street.
Conclusion
We do not work in an industry of fluff. We work in an industry of contracts and definitions. The stakes are devastation or restoration. Do not read this article and think you can create a brand from thin air and sell insurance properly. You need to do the work and have the actual policy acumen to be the best agent out there.
Hopefully, with personal branding, you can be the best agent out there and have people feel it right away.
The author
Bill Brooker is a fourth-generation risk advisor at Brooker Insurance Agency in Strongsville, Ohio. Bill serves clients and non-clients alike, offering third-party insurance reviews, and speaks as a topic expert in the field of risk management. Bill is a firm believer in agents helping agents and welcomes anyone to reach out to him via his LinkedIn profile.
