Most folks don't know this: I failed the California commercial licensing
exam twice. I was at Allianz Trade Credit at the time. Failing a third time
would have meant immediate termination. I passed, and history was made.
But the deeper reason I stayed in commercial insurance for two decades came
earlier. I joined ADP in 1995 — an era when its corporate sales training
was rotating among the top three programs in America,
alongside IBM and Xerox. Then-CEO Josh Weston, who had built
that culture, spoke to my new District Manager class and said something
I never forgot:
“There is no better place to sell than in an environment where
it's compulsory — by the government — to possess a specific
product or coverage to be in compliance.”
Trade credit had elements of that. But when I pivoted to workers'
compensation, then commercial auto, then BOP and general
liability — lines where the law itself compels coverage —
I excelled. The economics of compulsory lines do work for any operator
who shows up consistently. I was good at this.
Between ADP and Allianz I spent a season at Parsons Group /
Accenture Consulting as an Account Executive selling Y2K solutions,
PeopleSoft implementation, accounting & finance solutions, and business
process re-engineering to Fortune 1000 clients — Bank of America,
The Walt Disney Company, NBC Studios, Avery Dennison, Countrywide Home Loans.
I called on VP Finance, CFO, CIO, CTO, occasionally CEO. Strategic
planning was part of every engagement. The muscle I built there
— the ability to speak the language of every department head and
translate between them — is what I brought back into insurance.
It's the difference between selling a quote and aligning a carrier, a
distribution channel, an underwriting org, and a broker around the same plan.
And the people in this industry are more grounded than the people I worked
with in tech and consulting. Less ego. More figuring it out.
I made friendships that have lasted twenty years.
