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industry ?
Doug Smart : You have to have a lot of contacts and know a lot of people . But the biggest thing is you have to constantly ask every person or business you know for their business . Also , you have to love being involved in a lot of organizations . When I was in college , I learned that I was the most successful when I was the busiest and forced to be rigid in managing my time . When I moved to Abilene , I got involved in anything and everything I could . You don ’ t have to ask everybody the day you meet them for their business , but you have to make sure that they know who you are and make sure that you ’ re there if they need you . But I still think that the number one key to success in the insurance business is hard work . And that sounds cliché , but you just have to work and ask people for their business . If you are sitting in your office behind a desk and waiting for the phone to ring , you can make a living doing that , but not a good living .
Dave Hulcher : Insurance is complicated ; how did you prepare yourself to be a strong insurance agent in helping those in your community ?
Doug Smart : When I bought the agency , we wrote P & C and L & H business . In less than a year , I realized I didn ’ t have the bandwidth to offer health insurance products and do it well , so we stopped selling it . I still sell life insurance at what I call the basic level , but when you get to the point when your life insurance is part of your investment portfolio , I pass that on to a financial planner .
When I bought the agency , I knew crop insurance and very little about other P & C lines . I knew I had to learn fast . The first week on the job , a marketing rep from Farmers Alliance came to the agency to introduce himself . That marketing representative was Jack Rader , who is now their Senior Vice President . Knowing that I had a lot to learn about insurance , Jack took the time to give me an “ Insurance 101 ” class . He literally took a full day of his time to help educate me . To this day , I ’ ve never forgotten what he did and remain incredibly loyal to him and Farmer ’ s Alliance for that reason .
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