MOST insurance advertising is designed to encourage customers to choose with whom to do business. It's the customers' fingers–not the agency's–that do the walking. When a prospect calls, many agencies immediately start to gather information required to complete a quote, so a prospect has the advantage of knowing the agency wants his or her business. How does this affect the agency's future relationship with that client? Who's in the driver's seat? Even when agency producers' fingers do the dialing (on unqualified lists of expirations), they are likely to be successful mainly with prospects interested in buying on price. Either way, the customer ends up choosing the agency, rather than the other way around.

An agency doesn't have to do business this way. It can decide to choose its clients, thereby getting more of the sort it desires and is best prepared to serve. Once it makes this decision, the agency can focus its advertising, marketing and service on customers of its choosing. By doing so, the agency will reap the benefits that accrue to all good relationships in which the parties complement each other. They include the following:

1) Reduced E&O exposures: Wisely chosen customers are less likely to sue you when, for example, they suffer an uncovered flood claim–even though you have written evidence you offered such coverage at least five times and the insured rejected it every time. Some people will never take responsibility for their decisions, and it is best to let someone else insure them.