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E29 Balance Workload Spikes with Rob Cockle · Stronger Business Together

• Granger Forson: So this is the Stronger Business Together podcast where business owners learn from other owners. No theory, no gurus, just real journeys and overcoming real hurdles. Today I'm joined by Rob Cockle who runs Business Insurance Partnership and like any owner he's in that middle of building things, fixing things and growing something that matters to him. So Rob, welcome. Rob Cockle: Hello Grainger, thanks for having me on. Granger Forson: Awesome! So let's do Act 1 now, your business. So in plain English, what does your business do? Rob Cockle: Well, the business is called Business Insurance Partnership, which will give you a clue. We're insurance brokers focused on B2B and we can help most businesses. We look for clients that are engaged and wanting to protect their business and would appreciate the high level of advice you get from VIP. Granger Forson: Excellent. So you talked about business to business. But who do you typically like? Love helping? And what are they dealing with normally? Rob Cockle: So, so it is we can help most businesses. There's a few that we're not very good at. We're not very good at equestrian, some agricultural education, with a care that they can be tricky areas. Other than that, we can do, we can help most businesses. Typically, we deal with business owners. We like, we like that arrangement because business owners have skin in the deal. They're going to be very interested in protecting what they've built. And as I said, I think we We're probably above average with the advice that we give. So that approach is appreciated by those types of people. Granger Forson: Excellent. Brilliant. it's business owner, people that need really good business insurance, you've got that partnership word because you actually help them to really understand what their needs are. Excellent. Okay. when did the business start then? What was that original spark? Rob Cockle: So it's a niche I've wanted to scratch for a couple of decades really. I've only ever been an insurance broker and after 30 years of doing that, I've become quite difficult to employ. I I was working in a corporate environment and the driver towards profit was becoming frictional and tedious. So I'm much more focused on what did the clients need and How can I go from the best service rather than maximizing revenue? So that plus the itch to scratch, which is I think I can do this differently and better turned into a business that was registered in 2019 and launched in early 2020 with a idea in my head, which was if I can, well, starting with me, but then recruit good people, make sure they're appropriately qualified and trained. And then just set free to look after clients. So our business isn't run on, on the KPIs and sales targets. And we don't have any limitations on time spent with clients. What we do have is a, so the only, really the only KPI is retention. So we know that if the clients are coming back year after year after year, then we're doing something right. And our retention is absolutely bulletproof and much higher than any. business I've worked in before, so it seems to be working. But then 2020, probably remember what happened in 2020, so Granger Forson: yes, yes. Rob Cockle: a couple of months after we started. Having come from a corporate background, it was always going to be really important for me to be able to network and go and meet people because my big corporate international client contacts were never going to appoint Rob Cockle Limited in Gloucester to be their insurance broker, so was always, aiming the business at smaller local businesses. So yeah, lockdown was a pretty poorly timed joke for us. So yeah, that was an interesting time. In second half of 2020, I was looking at a decision as to whether to take one of the job offers I had when I'd left my previous employment or to double down and keep the business going. And I decided on the... latter. So I now have a household all the equity gone. But we're still here five years later and we're a team of four and we're growing at a respectable pace and still retaining our clients. I'm quite happy with how that's turned out. Granger Forson: And what I love about that is, okay, determination, but everyone have determination, but the real passion you have of customer retention, know, so that's your only KPI. And that's really important because you can build on retention business after business rather than actually constantly chasing new work just to fill the work that's gone. So I love that. That's fantastic. Rob Cockle: It's a funny thing because it's well understood in the industry that the cost of finding new clients and onboarding them is several times higher than renewing clients. I think it's sort of a standard benchmark for an insurance broker would be retaining nine out of 10 clients. Whereas we, I mean, it's near as dammit, 100%. We, maybe a couple we've lost out of 400 in the last 12 months to competition. But I think if you're holding on to that and you're growing at a pace that's controllable in terms of the advice you're giving at the onboarding stage, I think that's a win-win for us and for clients. Granger Forson: Brilliant, yeah, totally agree. One really great business model there. So why do your customers pick you? How do you delight them then? Rob Cockle: so, when we started off, all of our, clients came from networking. joined BNI in 2020 and Sterling in 2021, and then some other, local business groups on a more ad hoc basis. So that's where it came from initially. but as time's gone by, the, percentage of clients that we're getting from, networking is relative to a referral from clients is doing this. So referral from clients is climbing up and that's really, really encouraging as well. Really funny to answer this question, but I did some research a couple of years ago with the clients to try and understand what we were doing that they liked or perhaps what we were doing that they didn't like. And I was hoping that I was expecting really that they were going to come back and say, Our BIP give us lots of advice. It's nothing to do with insurance. really know that they're good experienced business people. They they're good sounding board and we get lots of non-insurance advice from them because I think we do that really well. But what came back from the market research was they're nice people and they answered the telephone. And at first I was gutted and crestfallen and then and then somebody said to me, yeah. Rob, that means that your competitors are perhaps not so nice to deal with and perhaps don't answer the telephone. So that's something valuable to know. So there you go. Granger Forson: Fantastic! That's brilliant! Yes, great to work with, nice to work with and also answer the telephone. Well, yeah. say the negative is probably the most important thing of why people are leaving and coming to you and you get that Rob Cockle: Mm. Mm. Granger Forson: renewal because that's what we all want most of the time you know we just want that extra bit of advice and we want to have that assurity that if we've got a problem or thing that you can just answer that question answer that telephone so yeah brilliant put it in their words so you talked about lead gen through networking you know typically then where does your leads come from Rob Cockle: So it's very, at the moment it's 70 % networking referrals and 30 % client referrals. We've considered long and hard. We did get a very small amount through our website. Our website is actually quite well viewed and we do get inquiries. But the thing I like about networking or client referrals is that somebody has already done some thinking before that person reaches out to us. Somebody has spoken to somebody else that says, Rob or VIP should be able to help with that problem. because we know our clients, they're going to be the kind of people that are probably going to enjoy dealing with us. that when somebody contacts us, that's been referred, not only are you off to a good start from the point of view of them having trust in us, but it cuts the other way as well. So, when I get a phone call from somebody from the internet who's you know, randomly found us. AI has told them that we're, good in shorts, but that's lovely. but it's a different process because I needed to get to know them. I need to find out, Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: you know, what they're all about. What, what, what's there. I spent a lot more time on that initial conversation. Whereas if it's a referral from somebody that's already dealing with us or knows how we work and says they should be able to help that we're off to a, we're off to more of a flyer. Granger Forson: Yes, the strength of referrals is a very powerful thing. Ability to get you almost along the sales pipeline by the time they turn up. So fantastic. Rob Cockle: Definitely. Granger Forson: So Rob, what are you aiming for over the next 12 months for the business and why? Rob Cockle: Okay, we're a small business and so for us perennial issue is making sure that we've got adequate resource and because our workload is a bit lumpy in terms of how much time, how much work we have to do at different times of the year. We've had to make sure we're running a little bit rich at the moment in terms of resource. It's a quieter time of year. We've just taken on a fourth person, so there's four of us in the team. And so the next 12 months is making that pay for itself, making sure that we've got all our systems and everything sorted, make sure we keep that retention there, and then just steadily grow the book to the point where we can have a business. For me, it's generating revenue because I've been investing very heavily for a long time and it'd be quite nice to see some return. and then, build a solid base for the next stage of expansion. So the end of 2027 probably will be thinking about that again. Granger Forson: in. that. Looking forward to seeing that happen and knowing you I know it will do. So excellent. Well let's move on to act two now. Your journey as a business owner. you know building a business over the last few years you know apart from Covid that is you Rob Cockle: you Granger Forson: know you've had some highs and lows. What have been some of the highs and lows that you would share with us? Rob Cockle: So I think from very early doors, I did one or two things really well and one or two things not so well that perhaps would have been unavoidable. so the one thing that I did really well, think was outsource as much as I could possibly afford as soon as I could. so I'm in a service industry and it's important when you're, especially when, when I was at that one man band stage to be able to use my time to be advising clients, rather than, know, sorting out it issues or accounts or compliance issues. all of that outsource as much as much as I could. I'm very happy I did that. suppose in year two or three, Already by that stage, we had this problem starting to develop of the amount of work and where it was landing in the calendar year. So we'd won an intermediated sales opportunity. So this is a case where through an introducer, we had a couple of hundred renewals all due on the same date. And then that got significantly worse when we picked up another one in, so that was in a February. And then we picked up another one in October a year later that had 450 transactions to do on the same day. So for small, for, for Granger Forson: Okay. Rob Cockle: at the time we were two and then three people working in the business. And so we had some really, really hard yards in those periods where everybody was working really hard, but I can tell you that the buck stock's here. And it gets tedious when you've just done your fifth week of too many hours a day and seven days a week. So those Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: have been where the lows have come. But Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: they're good. mean, so what was I supposed to do? Turn away the opportunity when I'm a growing business? No. So you Granger Forson: Absolutely. Rob Cockle: mustn't complain about income, I don't suppose. Granger Forson: Yeah. And when it got really hard, what did you learn about yourself? Rob Cockle: I don't know I learned much about myself, probably reminded myself that I'm stubborn. And I care about my clients. So I do the ads and just so drawn through and let down my various networking organizations and what have you say, I'm sorry, but my clients come first and you have to cut down on what other things you're doing outside of that. So Granger Forson: Yeah, yeah. Rob Cockle: yeah, I think. I definitely came out of the sort of second really tough period of that, of thinking, I'm not sure how uncomfortable I might feel about taking the plunge and resourcing up further at this stage, but it doesn't matter. We as a team can't do that again. So we've, we upscaled last year, did some really good learning last year about procedures and processes. And as a larger team this year. I think we're much better placed. The work's already started. Liz, my number two, is running the project this year for the big one in October. And that's already, I can see that's being done much better in terms of the project management than when I was doing it last year, because I have a million other plates that I'm spinning, whereas that delegation to somebody that's competent should make a big difference this year, I hope. Granger Forson: Brilliant. mean every now and then we make a decision that really sort of changes the business direction or trajectory you know and anything that's been a sort of a whoosh moment for you. Rob Cockle: so, service led business, and to look after the clients, you need good people. so, the, the strength of the team that we've got now is what I'm Granger Forson: Mm. Rob Cockle: most proud of and what has made the biggest difference in terms of, how the business feels to work in. think how our clients feel, you know, nice people answer the phone. Well, now there's more of us to be nice and answer the phone. So responsiveness is probably better. Yeah, and just the general, you might see on our social media that we have a lot of fun working here. I think if you asked the people that work here, they would say, I look forward to coming to work. So I'm happy with that. Granger Forson: Brilliant, one of the things I do with my clients at The Stronger Business Together is we have a phrase which is grow your people so they grow your business. So what have you learned then over the last few years about growing people within your business that maybe you should have known a bit earlier? Rob Cockle: you familiar with, this profiling? Yeah. So, we take, psychology really seriously in this business. so we will, do a psychological testing, figure out what our profiles are, and then read into that to figure out how we work together as a team. We actually spend time together with that data. and it's, they're really good fun sessions. where we'll talk about each other's strengths and weaknesses and how to approach each other. And then the little niggles turn into laughter points now, because everybody knows that I'm a bit, how do you say the word, Granger? You know me. I'm Granger Forson: Hi, hi Dee. Rob Cockle: high D, high C, so my ability to nitpick and look into detail and. And, you know, use the right words is you wouldn't want to take me anywhere near marketing copy, for example, because I will Granger Forson: You Rob Cockle: never come out of that rabbit hole. so, so, yeah. And likewise, the other team members, we've, we've, all know each other's, know, traits and foibles and try and play nicely around those. Granger Forson: I love that. And that's a really important thing to understand each other, but to understand each other in a way that it's meaningful, you know, and disc or other psychometric testing is really useful if you use it. And what I think is a beautiful example you just demonstrated is how to actually use it in a business, not just because the leadership tell you, say that we should do this. So that's brilliant, brilliant. And we also believe in simplifying things and making things easier. And you talked about last year, you spent some time on process and making things better with through process. What have you learned then about processes and simplifying things? Rob Cockle: You can't always trust what people say. we did, what did we do last year on this big project? On this big project last year, we switched the finance provider. So this is four or five hundred retired people buying an insurance product. And so we were able to save a little bit of money for them on the cost of their finance. So we thought that'd be a good idea. And it looked like the system would be slicker, so less admin. So thought that would be a good idea. And then we did it. despite sandboxing it, enjoy running it, as soon as it came to the live environment, we started hitting problems all over the place. And with the numbers, it was really, really difficult. So don't trust what everybody says. So we're going to probably reverse out of that. But then also, were using a, we need to write quite a bit of snail mail with that process. So again, we thought, it was really painful to stuff envelopes the year before and pay for the postage and cure at the post office. This wasn't working for us, so we'll use an outsourced company to print and post. And again, we did the sandboxing, we played with it and it was all fine. And when it came to the live environment, we found that it was unworkably slow. So that again is gonna be changing. changing direction this year, we think we've got a different solution that's going to be a little bit more in our control and hopefully will work significantly better. That and the timing of the whole process, so the underwriters were slow to the party last year, so we've had, I don't know, we've just had our third meeting with the senior underwriter there explaining to him, underlining three times to say end of July, we need that data. So hopefully we'll start earlier. and have better processes, but that's just that one project. Granger Forson: What I love about that description that you gave him is you're a real learner. You're a learning organization. You're not just saying, oh, that was a nightmare. You've actually said, well, this year we're going to try this. We're going to do this. And you even did practicing beforehand in Sandbags and Environments to see if it actually worked. That's a fantastic learning organization that you're building, which is, you'll believe, quite rare in all those small businesses. So fantastic. Rob Cockle: Yeah, I think if you're not making mistakes, you're not learning. We've made some mistakes. But this is why Granger Forson: Yeah. Yeah, it's a... Yeah, but... Rob Cockle: I'm so chuffed about the team is that everyone is flexible, understands and it creates adversity with a smile and a joke. So it's good. Granger Forson: Yeah. My business partner and I, were having a very same conversation this morning about the things that we've failed at and the last four months of launching the business and things that are going well. And actually, we've probably learnt more from those things that went wrong than actually the things that have gone right. And even this morning, we have a process called stop and fix where something's going wrong. We don't allow it to go forward any further. you know, I walked downstairs to Elaine and said, this isn't working we need to do stop and fix you said okay that's the only time I'm allowed to disturb her directly without confirmation first is when we have a stop and fix situation and we just did it there's then got it fixed moved on we then put it on a to-do list we just learned and did that so fantastic I love what you're doing so AI you know where is AI saving time for you and where is it probably still a distraction Rob Cockle: So, so I've been, I've been, playing with various, AI, engines for, a couple of years now. and we, we've got, we've got to a point where, it can take, shocking amounts of time out of, recording. if I having this meeting with a client, whether we would have a transcript and, those those, those transcript notes can be turned into, workable minutes with, very few amendments. Now, in fact, I had my first one a couple of weeks ago where it had no amendments required at all. I read it through and it was just like, fine. And, it's also in my voice. so, know, whenever you see AI copy or AI articles or AI podcasts, you spot them a mile off. There's certain traits that you think you think, okay, This has been, this has been AI, but this is not looking like that. I think partly because it's mine and my client's words are the base material. And partly because it's been trained to, to, to produce an output that is what I've asked it for. so that's, really good. time saving. I'll also, talk to it about technical issues. And this is where it's starting to get a little bit scary because, over the last couple of years, its ability to understand complex questions and produce meaningful answers is grown leaps and bounds. So a typical question would be, I've got this scenario and my thoughts are this, what do you think? And then it comes back and goes, yeah, you're right, Rob, most of the time. Occasionally it comes up with something I haven't thought of, but it's quite nice to have that sort of sense check. I would say with AI, for anybody that's listening and watching and thinking of doing it, you need to be really careful about the environment that you use and make sure that it's secure and that you're not sharing your client data or any other sort of intellectual property with the rest of the world. Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: So a paid for subscription with the appropriate settings is really important. But then we're also Granger Forson: Yes. Rob Cockle: looking at how we can use it in processing and communications. Processing for us is a bit of a challenge because we work in a highly regulated environment and we have certain software applications with licensing that means that taking data out of that without using the API, which is what would be great with AI, is potentially contractually problematic. So we're just exploring that now to see whether we can all play nicely together. Granger Forson: Wow fantastic really good description The thing about you talked about using AI to simplify, taking notes to think about difficult questions. you can use in marketing the power of AI is you can train it. You talked about your voice. You can actually train an AI system to from, you if you've got thousand tweets or 50 social media posts that you've done in the past, you can actually train it on those and it will be your voice and your structures that come out from that point onwards. It's very clever. that as well so there's some really interesting ways of using AI and we'll see that coming over the next coming months and years. Rob Cockle: For those companies that want to broadcast a message, then that's really important. I was saying that I did a little bit of a round robin before this call today. I was telling you that we did a little bit of a round robin with my peers to see where they are with AI. For those that broadcast messaging, they're absolutely using it in that way. because we've focused on networking and warm introductions, it's, it's, less relevant for us right now, but for the, those that are focused on getting their message out to as wide a market as possible, then yeah, absolutely. You would be, you definitely need to be looking at that. Granger Forson: Yeah, no it's an important tool to really understand, start playing with, start thinking about, definitely do it in a secure and organized way but you don't get left behind it's a really simple tool once you get your head around it to use. You can use it in a complex way or you can use it in a simple way you know and that's what I work with my clients to understand how to use simplicity. Rob Cockle: I tell you a sort of not obvious way that I've used it as well is to start using it with programming. Now for programmers or software developers, it's a very obvious way, but for an insurance broker, I was looking at a suggested compliance change recently to do with the FCA's fair value requirements and fair value statements. And this would entail a change to our charging structure with our client fees. So I needed to work through what that would look like for my business on a financial basis. So first of all, I was able to use anonymized data to get a feedback to say, if we applied this charging structure to this policy count and this premium split, what would that mean for the business? It wasn't good news, Granger. And then the second bit of work that I then did was OK. Well, if we want to live within this new fair value statement, what would it look like? How would we need to do this? And that then required us to have a piece of software that would enable us to charge variable fees sitting within the fair value policy. And guess what? I didn't write it. I had AI write the piece of software, Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: looked at it, tested it, tweaked it a bit. So if that's where this conversation goes with the compliance team. then that's what we will implement without having to pay for license software or have everybody do individual calculations on every policy, is what that would entail otherwise. Granger Forson: Yeah, brilliant. that's a fantastic share. Thank you, Rob, for that. So let's move on to Act 3 now, our hurdle round. So what's the hurdle you brought with us to discuss today? Rob Cockle: Well, we've touched on it little bit already, which is a perennial problem for us. It has been from the get-go. I think it will be for a long time. And I don't think it really ever goes away having worked in Broking for forever. But it is dealing with variable workload in a small business. Granger Forson: Managing those peaks and troughs of the demand especially as you talked about earlier on you've got those big projects that come through at certain times. Okay so let's talk about the background first. What currently happens today? What's the peaks and troughs? Rob Cockle: So the variability can be caused by a whole bunch of different things. So you can have variability in volume and complexity of your new business pipeline. So one week you're gonna, I'll get some residential landlords ring us up and they're fairly straightforward and they go through a fairly quick process and get some advice and they tell us to go ahead. And then the next day I'll have what I'm working on now which is something that looks looks very much like a financial analyst firm, but not FCA regulated working with, um, in the, the, in the charitable sector. Okay. That's going to be a bit of a, so that one's had two, two, two teams calls and there'll be, we've been working on a proposal form to go there. There will be, I don't know, day and a half's broken work to do on that. Um, and Granger Forson: Yeah. Okay. Rob Cockle: that's, that's gotta be done before the end of May. So So 26th of May Granger, I'm in trouble. So that happens, Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: and also my client that came to me last week and said, Rob, I meant to show you this piece of business last year, I came to you with my insurance requirements last year, but I was too late. And I said, you're too late now, it's June the 24th of May. This was the 21st. So we need a bit of runtime to do these things. Granger Forson: Right. Rob Cockle: so there's new business, there's lumpy renewal books, which are accident of history. we discussed already with these big cases that are, that are where they are, that are where they Granger Forson: Yeah. Yeah. Rob Cockle: are, that not all we can do about it. there's claims. so our clients with claims come first. so, everything stops for if somebody rings me up and says, I've got an issue, they get immediate attention. so those are the, sort of client driven things. but then there's, external things. Some of them are completely outside of your control. we've got, I don't know, 300 properties in Gloucestershire, know, 2008 was it Gloucestershire flooded. that would be a lot of phone calls saying my house is wet. What do do? we've got, you could have, you can have, insurance companies going bust independent went busted the turn of the century. I was in a business where they had to replace 16,000 policies now. So that's Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: a shock of resource shock. can have economy tanking and businesses going bankrupt. Clients ring you up and say, I've just bought a business and it's got an offshore based in Belgium. Great. sorry, is too long, That's why it's variable. What do we do about it? Granger Forson: Okay, absolutely. No, I get that. Absolutely. Yeah. So, I suppose, what is your star conditions? Which ones of those impact you? So you've got the variable sales conversations and detail you need to do. You've got the large workloads from legacy work. Are there any others that are hitting you on the variable activity? Rob Cockle: Now, think my propensity to find really complicated new business, historic, the historic, the historic, no, no, I quite enjoy it there. So, Granger Forson: Well you need to change that then don't you? Rob Cockle: but it's also, that's where you get the retention from, because you've got the advice, the advice level goes up, the retention goes up, and the relationship is stronger. So, Granger Forson: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Rob Cockle: and this historic renewal. Granger Forson: Okay. Rob Cockle: thing is that the Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: two most pressing things. Granger Forson: Okay so the two very different type of activities that we're thinking about here. Now one is you've already started thinking about process and organization around it with those big historic claims. Let's look at the other one which is the variable activity that's coming in. Now all processes, activities are measurable so what do you measure today for you and your team that understands what that variability is? Rob Cockle: okay. So, we, we are very, very, very poor at measuring in terms of numbers. think I said about, you know, we've got an aversion culturally to, sales targets and KPIs and blah, blah, blah. but what we do Granger Forson: Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Rob Cockle: do, but what we do do, which works really well because we're a small team is that we have a, a weekly meeting, which is, very, workman like. where we will just assess each other's workloads. And Granger Forson: Okay. Rob Cockle: it will run through new business going on, renewables ongoing, some certain introducer relationships that we need to report on. And then there's generally some work swapping goes on in that so that we don't break people. So Granger Forson: Mm-hmm. Okay. Rob Cockle: I'm busier than you, you have that. You're busier than me, I'll take that. Granger Forson: Okay so that's sort of reorganizing across the team but as a team do you actually sort of rate the new work that's coming in you know do you call them small easy and hard or complex you know do you have an understanding typically of this one will be one hour this will be 10 hours this will be 50 hours you know how do you sort of understand what that work as it's arriving is doing. Rob Cockle: BGQ Granger. That's a bloody good question. So we have on our new business board, for example, we have the client's name, the due date, the income, whether it's been quoted and whether it's been instructed. And we could Granger Forson: Okay. Rob Cockle: very easily on that put a difficulty rating on it. It would be very easy to add another thing on that board that says difficulty and then score it one to 10 so that we know that if somebody's got three 10s on the go, that's not right. Granger Forson: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. it's sometimes it's about just complexity of variability is maybe because we just don't understand what's actually going on rather than we just sit back and go, it's all complex. So Rob Cockle: Yeah. Granger Forson: while you don't want to measure, appreciate that, you know, I would start thinking about measuring activity, but just giving it a rating, A, B, C, D. Yeah. And then tracking going back but maybe you can't because there's just too much effort but maybe just over the last month you could all rate your your ABCs and start then to track the number of A's B's C's D's that are coming through and start to see what the pattern you know that could be there. Now patterns often don't emerge after one month they'll emerge over over a period of time but what you can then start to see is okay how many A's could we do in a session when we're at work because we've still got the other things to do. We've got to deal with the phone calls, we've got to deal with activities that taking place for the renewals, absolutely. But then how many A's can we get done? How many B's can we get done? So you can start to understand, as you're rightly doing in your weekly meeting, how do we share up because we've got too much on where actually you can talk in a context of a b c ds whatever or one to ten you know whatever you want to go for Rob Cockle: Yeah, I like it. Granger Forson: and that that starts as a team then you build a language that helps you to understand now I would cautionary measuring A, B, Cs Ds by time. The reason being as soon as you get into time people then start going well this one took me four hours and it should have taken me six hours this one yeah that guys don't do that not in a small business just not worth it but rating it could give you a way of then sharing the workload better. Rob Cockle: Yeah, and we've got some sort of technical differences in ability as well. So, you know, the one that I said looks like a financial analyst in the third sector, that's a job. So that's going to have to stay there. But if that would be a D because it's difficult. Whereas, Granger Forson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rob Cockle: yeah, I like this because you could see it. You could get challenged as well. because at the moment I Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: think it's sort of like a bit of a push and shove between the different team members to say, I'm busy, I'm busy. Whereas if you've got the evidence on the board and be like, yeah, okay, guys, or Rob, Granger Forson: Yes, yes. Rob Cockle: you're taking on too much or Liz, you're taking on Granger Forson: Yeah. Rob Cockle: too much. Granger Forson: And if you can balance that then with the other activities that's taking place in the business, so answering phone calls, doing the renewals over time, you can then start to then picture the capacity from week to week. So you can start to say, okay, typically in a week we have the ability to do 30 A's across the board. But if we divide that, one B is worth two A's and one C is worth two B's or whatever that is, eight A's. right. You can start to sort of structure a bit like that that allows you then to say how much spec capacity do we have that we can then balance the workload between us. But it's something that you learn over time and build. It's not something you do straight away. know, I was intimating when before the call, you know, I used to work in automotive and we had some clients which were nice regular beats. Thank you Toyota. And we had some clients that were completely random Ford Motor Company. and we had to learn how to manage all those different activities but over time we could see patterns that we could build production to because production want nice steady simple beats because that's the most efficient you can be in anything but we had to learn how to build those patterns over time that allowed us to manage the chaos I'll say that Ford Motor Company used to send to us. Rob Cockle: Thank you, Ford. Granger Forson: So what would you do first then? What would be your next step? Rob Cockle: In terms of implementing that idea. Oh, it's Granger Forson: Yeah, well, something like that, Rob Cockle: like, we'll just do it and we'll have a chat and say, this is idea, are we all on board? Hopefully everybody's going to agree if they don't, there'll be this challenge. Might be a critical challenge, but probably not because it's a fairly straightforward idea. And then we'll break it down into A, C and D. And I was just thinking about that. So I think A would be E-traded, B would be E-traded plus referral to an underwriter. So some policies are very straightforward and you can E-trade them. others need conversation. C would be a full manual quotation. So writing a report or recommendation, presentation to market, sending them out, speaking to underwriters. And D is going to be a full manual recommendation plus complex client requirements. that's, Granger Forson: Excellent. Rob Cockle: D's are almost always going to be me, but A, B and C we can split out. Granger Forson: And over time, developing your team to be able to do, say, new starters, they'll start with A's, then they'll move on to B's. Developing then your current team to do C's and then even then onto D's, then you can get even more flexibility between your team what you need to do because now you can define a of a route of development for them as well. Rob Cockle: I'm sorry if I'm greeting rager, but I this idea more and more. Granger Forson: That's pleasure. That's what I do. I like to help talk through problems and then bring other thoughts that I've had from Rob Cockle: Yeah. Granger Forson: my experience for doing that. Brilliant. Okay. Fantastic. Rob Cockle: I like it. Granger Forson: So how do you think then if we look forward in time how do think this would potentially help you as a team? Rob Cockle: Well, hopefully it would smooth out the workload. So hopefully we'll be more efficiently working on cases that are more closely suited to everybody's abilities and sharing the workload more efficiently. Granger Forson: Yeah, excellent. Rob Cockle: And hopefully what that would mean is less stress and a bit more capacity to be doing other things. Granger Forson: Yes, and the big project work you've talked about, you've got to do a lot more planning and thinking and you're already planning that to see and how you would then blend that into this. You know, could break that project work then up into A, Bs Cs and therefore you can identify even renewals in the same type of structure. You know, they could be one, two, three, four type numbers. So you can then see quotations versus renewals and start to see the balance of numbers between your team. Rob Cockle: Yeah, I think it's a really useful shorthand that could be used in all sorts of ways, not just on the new business front. Which is why I was starting to grin. Why didn't I think of this? Granger Forson: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Fantastic. Rob Cockle: Why didn't I think of this Granger? Tell me. Granger Forson: Because sometimes we don't have that outside point of view that's been in other industries that can help us, that can see other ways of working that we've used in multiple things. was also thinking of my software development head and agile software development and how you manage workloads between multiple different people that are writing different code stacks etc as well but I thought we'd use the automotive version that we used in production. So let's go into our wrap up and close now. So Rob what did you hear yourself say today that maybe surprised you? Rob Cockle: Well, I think I wasn't expecting any sort of really good magic wands for the variable workload solution, but I think you've come up with a really good suggestions. think BGQ Granger is probably what escaped my mouth that Granger Forson: you Rob Cockle: I wasn't really expecting to work with today. So well done you. Granger Forson: You're most welcome, you're most welcome. So Rob, finally how can people get a hold of you if they want to follow more of your journey? Rob Cockle: So the website's BIP-LTD.co.uk and we're on LinkedIn, Business Insurance Partnership Limited, so I think it should be quite easy to find. yeah, telephone, they can speak to you, Granger, I'm sure you'll put them in touch. Granger Forson: Absolutely, we're all good at referrals, aren't we? Fantastic. Well, Rob, thank you so much for a fantastic conversation. I know our listeners will get a huge amount out of this conversation today. Thank you. Rob Cockle: Thank you very much, Granger. As I said, it was really good to come up with something concrete to go and work on. Appreciate that. Granger Forson: Thanks for spending your time with us today. We're on a mission to make business owners stronger together. If this conversation has helped you, please like, comment and follow on whatever platform you're using. 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