Use insurance industry events to make new friends
Those of us who have learned to network effectively owe it to our less-experienced colleagues to help them along.
If you’ve been in the insurance industry for a while, you know there is no shortage of conventions, conferences and trade shows to attend, and June seems to be the height of conference season. As journalists, my team and I are invited to more conferences than we can attend. All of them have value, whether it’s in learning about new trends or improving our understanding of existing insurance issues.
To me, the most important reason to attend any conference is for the networking opportunities. The more people you can meet, the more you enhance your understanding of your profession, your industry and your world.
Over the span of two weeks, I attended the RIMS 2019 Annual Conference & Exhibition in Boston with about 10,000 paid attendees, as well as numerous vendors, exhibitors and media representatives. At RIMS, meetings can feel a lot like speed dating if you don’t manage your time wisely. My team and I met with 40 senior insurance executives over two days, and we attended several social events from one-to-one breakfasts to large parties with thousands of guests.
From there, I went to the American Bar Association Section of Litigation Annual Conference in New York with close to 2,000 lawyers. This too was a mix of education sessions on substantive law as well as practical sessions on trial techniques. It also offered opportunities to meet people from the newest associates to the most senior and experienced partners, to judges from state and federal courts.
My next stop wasn’t in glamorous Las Vegas, Chicago, San Francisco or New Orleans. Rather, I was a presenter at the PIA Southern Alliance annual convention in Biloxi, Miss., with about 200 professional insurance agents from Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Here, I was privileged to meet insurance professionals who gave me a regional perspective on the insurance industry — not one I get to learn about from most of the press releases that arrive in my email inbox.
The most notable thing about each of these events was how few attendees under the age of 30 were taking advantage of the opportunity to make new friends. For an industry that is built heavily on relationships, we seem to be doing a poor job of explaining to new insurance professionals why it’s important to put down the electronic devices and actually have a person-to-person conversation. You can learn a lot about the problems other professionals are dealing with that may be similar to yours. You might also make a contact in an insurance company or brokerage who you can call when you have a problem claim or need to place coverage for a challenging client.
I know that for many who are not natural extroverts or comfortable making polite conversation with strangers this can be difficult. But those of us who have learned to network effectively owe it to our colleagues to help them along. So the next time you’re invited to or set up a business lunch, try to find a junior person to take along. The only way to learn is by doing.
Then, when you need to find someone to do business with, everyone in your organization will be able to say, “I know just the person.”
And that’s what’s top of mind for me this month.
Related:
How agents can maintain personal client relationships and relevancy in the Digital Age