Building a Bright Future in the Middle Market with Brad Rosenkilde, Episode #28

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In this episode of The Power Producers Podcast, David Carothers and co-host Kyle Houck interview Brad Rosenkilde, Principal Agent at R&A Insurance Inc. Brad discusses how he got into the insurance business, his career in the insurance industry and how he built his pipeline around transportation based risk.

Episode Highlights:

  • David introduces Brad Rosenkilde. (1:24)
  • Brad shares his background and how he got into the insurance industry. (2:56)
  • Brad mentions that he wasn’t a good student, but he was a good communicator. (4:33)
  • Brad says that he likes the gravitas of saying that insurance is a sexy job. (10:48)
  • Brad shares that his agency is so ingrained at the highest level of our policyholder’s needs in what they do every day. (11:04)
  • Brad shares that insurance is a career that you get a lot of fulfillment if you put in a lot of hard work. (12:18)
  • Brad shares that getting into the towing companies was a huge outlet because they serve the vast majority of all the transportation based risks. (16:00)
  • What made Brad decide to get into the transportation niche? (16:54)
  • How did Brad put together his pipeline? (19:15)
  • David mentions that the things that require effort are always going to supersede the things that don’t. (21:43)
  • Brad talks about the snowball prospecting effect. (23:45)
  • Brad says that he’s not going to waste his time on somebody that is not the ideal prospect. (25:28)
  • Brad mentions that he gets enjoyment out of cold calling and finding new green organic people to talk to daily. (28:08)
  • Kyle shares that it’s such a rewarding feeling when you’re able to bring the value to somebody and see a positive impact. (29:17)
  • David shares what Kyle’s referral partners said. (29:48)
  • Did Brad play sports growing up? (33:33)
  • What is Brad’s hook when you get these people on the horn? (35:53)
  • Brad explains the OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 training. (38:40)
  • Brad thinks that from an insurance perspective, there are only three things you can do with risk. (45:26)
  • Ben mentions that funding mechanisms or compensation are one facet of an entire program that needs to be managed. (46:45)
  • David thinks that people miss the fact that if you do business the right way, you build better relationships with your underwriters as well. (46:52)

Tweetable Quotes:

  • “When you really pull the layers back to get to the core of what we do, it’s actually a pretty sexy job. I mean we get ingrained in our clients, businesses, you know, we’re experts at a lot of different things that people overlook.” – Brad Rosenkilde
  • We looked to focus on niche markets because we’ve watched how it can help a middle-market agency grow, and it’s something that we find a lot of pride and success in building out best in class products for certain industries.” – Brad Rosenkilde
  • “It’s that gamesmanship that wakes us up to do what we do every day. I love the competition when my clients get second opinions and market outside of my firm, that makes me rise to the occasion.” – Brad Rosenkilde
  • “There’s a lot of mechanisms that we bring to the table where we take the avoidance of risk approach, where we help businesses restructure their business processes to minimize their exposure to risk that they would otherwise transfer to insurance.” – Brad Rosenkilde

Resources Mentioned:

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