Brock Longworth, of Cornerstone Insurance Services Incorporated, sees his embrace of new technology as key to his success: “I’m not the kind of broker who focusses on massive accounts; I’m more interested in mainstream, mid-market accounts, and having a high volume of them, and leveraging technology for efficiency has enabled me to have a higher client count.
In fact, Longworth, who distinguished himself with the title of Saskatchewan’s Top Broker in Insurance Business Canada’s 2015 roundup of the nation’s elite brokers, calls on brokers to take the initiative with technology. “We as a brokerage need to develop the technology, rather than waiting for carriers to do it. It’s incumbent on brokers to make sure we’re adding value for our commission. The fax line, was it 20 years ago? Now there’s email, there’s iphone apps, there’s chat applications, and that’s just part of doing business now, you just gotta go with it!”
And surely this is the way to reach the elusive Gen Y consumer. Longworth, who identifies as a millennial, sees himself as being “of the same consumer mindset; if I want something, I want it right now. If I can’t do it on my phone it really aggravates me, and the next generation of customers are going to be that way too.”
Not only does the strategy of speaking to the generation of digital natives in their common tongue make sense for the present, Longworth points out it is also a long-term strategy. “It’s important that we’re responding in a fashion that speaks to that generation. Ten years from now they will be the ones running the businesses and owning the big homes, so that’s the target segment for us, and it’s important that we’re always gearing our marketing strategy and our customer responses to address that segment.”
