PREVIEW
THE BOOK
Excerpt from Chapter 3
Kermit, the Wizard of Oz and The Royal Hangover
Excerpt from Chapter 5
Death Ground
Excerpt from Chapter 11
Ice on the Wing, the Angels May Sing
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
Gene Reiling writes:
"In The Insurance Wars, Tompkins tells every mistake he made and how
he solved those mistakes to build his agency from scratch into the
powerhouse it is today. In The Insurance Wars, the 'how not to'
is as important as the 'how to'..."
-Western Dakota Insurors
Rapid City, SD
Bruce E. Cook writes:
"I started reading it at four in the afternoon, and
finished it at midnight...I wish I read it 30 years ago; it would have saved
me literally millions of dollars."
-Aloha Insurance Services, Inc.
Kailua Kona, HI
WORDS OF WISDOM
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If your marriage is shaky, probably having
your wife help you in business for no wages is a bad idea. |
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Do no count on a loan until you are certain
you have one. |
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Network, network, network: when you are done
doing that, network some more. |
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Snowmobile racing can be hazardous to your
marriage. |
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Do not ignore good technology, even if you
are hard up for money. |
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Advertising can be fun and does not have to
cost you an arm and a leg. |
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If good employees show up on your doorstep,
hire them, even if you do not know if you can afford them. |
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You can still do handshake deals in the Old
West. |
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Kermit, the Wizard of Oz and The Royal Hangover
...The great man got up and talked to us
assembled agents as if we were a dumb bunch of country hicks. We
probably were, but it was not nice to have it rubbed in our faces. He
gave us a vision of what he thought he could do with Milbank. He may
as well have been talking about launching the space shuttle: this was North
Dakota, not New York City. When we walked out of that meeting, I told
Linda, "Well, that's the end of that contract." I was exactly right.
Within a matter of months good old Kermit (That was the great man's name"
had reduced the staff of Milbank from over 475 people to, I believe, around
275. Those were the days when computers were first coming in, when
companies thought they could just get rid of people and use computers for
everything. Of course, Milbank was overstaffed, but not that much.
Good old Kermit totally blew away the infrastructure of that excellent
organization.
Hell, North Dakota was in the middle of a
recession--building contractors were working for a fraction of what they
were in New York City, but I guess nobody told the great Royal this!
Furthermore, they saw us agents as nothing but stupid Neanderthals and would
not believe that they were wrong on their cost estimators. The only
way we could keep business on the books and prices in line was by saying
farm buildings were smaller than they actually were so the cost estimates
would come out. I called Glenn Watson, my field man at the time, who
was a good friend as well, and told him I had just witnessed a miracle...
...So off Casey and I went to do the deal.
We visited all the various offices of this client, took pictures, filled out
apps, and drive the 400 miles to Milbank to present our account to the great
Oz. What a disappointment--they would hardly give us the time of day!
At first, I did not think the underwriter was even going to grant us an
interview. We were like Dorothy and Toto, and it soon became very
clear we were not in Kansas anymore either. After a cursory glance at
the deal, the underwriter simply said, "We are not interested in looking at
accounts such as this at this time." With those few words he blew off
a $250,000 premium outstanding account. Folks, this was in 1983.
This was from a company we had been told insured super tankers on the high
seas. What a crock of BS! Many years later, in 1995, I would buy
two other agencies that had somehow managed to keep doing business with
Royal Milbank. I was leery of doing business with them again, but
reasoned that the two books must be perfect if they had kept them. In
this I was right: both books were as clean as the wind-driven snow. |
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ORDER THE
INSURANCE WARS
ORDER
CONTACT INFORMATION:
(800) 735-4955
The Insurance Wars
408 20th Ave. SW, Suite 101
Minot, North Dakota 58701
info@theinsurancewars.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
 Chuck
Tompkins, CEO Western Agency, Inc., is a 31 year veteran of the insurance
business. Chuck started his career as a captive agent in 1973 for Farm
Bureau. In 1976 he started his own independent agency, Western Agency,
Inc., which has seven offices, seventeen employees, and writes over $12,000,000
in premiums excluding workers compensation insurance. Although Western
Agency, Inc. writes all lines of insurance, they specialize primarily in
contractors and farms. They are the largest single farm agency in North
Dakota insuring over 900 farms in the state at this time. Chuck and his
wife, Linda, live on a farm southeast of Minot and have six grandchildren.
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