When Dennis Bost talks about commitment to home and family — two central tenets of his role as a longtime State Farm agent — he is not kidding.
Bost has spent about 12 of his 21 years with the company running his own agency in Little Rock. Prior to that time, he was a member of the State Farm corporate structure, where he eventually reached a crossroads in his career. His supervisor wanted him to transfer with the company to Kansas City, but the native Arkansan saw staying in the Natural State as more conducive to raising his young family.
Sticking to his guns as a husband and father paid off professionally as Bost’s has grown into one of the most decorated agencies in the state. It is an accomplishment he comes by honestly, since his father was equally successful at his Arkadelphia agency for 40 years. To this day, Bost credits his father for some of the most critical pieces of wisdom that has underpinned his career, both spoken and demonstrated.
“In 1997, a major tornado hit Arkadelphia, and seeing how he was able to be there for his customers and help them out and help them recover from it really opened my eyes [to the industry],” he said. “After college, I came back, and Dad said, ‘Why don’t you just work for me for a little bit?’ During that time period, when people would pass away who had life insurance that he had written, I saw again how he’d helped so many different people. I was like, ‘You know what, this is a pretty cool industry.’
“Dad always told me, ‘You don’t work for State Farm. You have a fiduciary responsibility to State Farm, but you work for your customers.’ That’s a different philosophy than a lot of insurance agents have, but I’m old school. This isn’t like a lot of sales jobs, where you’re selling on margins and things like that. You actually get paid to do a better job of discussing the needs of your customers and taking better care of your customers. I’ve always run my agency on that.”
The challenges of the insurance business have arguably never been stiffer. While most people understand the general concept of how insurance works, the devil is most certainly in the details when it comes to separating one company’s products from another, especially with the rise of online options.
“The biggest thing that I see that people don’t always consider is that insurance is not a commodity,” he said. “A lot of people will shop for price and the lowest, cheapest coverage when, really, the most overlooked thing is liability. Liability can upend your life if you don’t have things covered correctly.
“A lot of insurance agents, unfortunately, don’t take the time to go over that with their customers. They try to sell them on the cheapest price possible instead of explaining to them what the liability coverage is on their homes and on their automobiles, especially a personal-liability umbrella policy that covers everything. They don’t take the time to talk about all of that. I think that’s the biggest thing when it comes to insurance.”
As an agency grows, so does the challenge of giving each policy holder the requisite attention they are paying for and deserve. That facet of business ownership is not always talked about but is something every agent has had to wrestle with, Bost included. In an age when many rely on technology to carry most of the load, Bost has followed a characteristically throw-back approach.
“You’ve got to surround yourself with very capable people,” he said. “I make sure that I’m hiring people who love to deal with people, who are going to be willing to go out there and fight for a customer when something happens and make sure that the right thing is done. We vet people very carefully to make sure they’ve got that attitude and they they’re going to be compassionate toward their situation.
“Once we hire that kind of person, I make sure we coach them up. We do weekly trainings, and we make sure they understand what’s going on. There are so many different products offered now, it’s just a never-ending training cycle.”
Bost’s previous corporate role, in which he hired his fair share of agents, was a great training ground for evaluating talent among the applicants seeking to come work for him in his agency. He said the insurance business offers a lot of opportunity to people regardless of educational or work background, provided they have the right people skills.
“I think it comes down to a certain type of personality,” he said. “It’s somebody who has a lot of self-awareness to know how to serve their customers, people who truly care about helping out people and don’t just say it.
“I had a guy who worked for me who was a teacher at [Hall-West High School of Innovation] in Little Rock. He had his master’s degree, taught high school English. He came in and worked for me for three years, and he’s excelling as an agent down in Tyler, Texas, now. Most people would say, ‘How would being an English teacher translate to being an insurance agent?’ It wasn’t the degree; it’s the type of personality he had.”
Bost said one aspect of taking care of clients properly is to make sure they are aware of everything their insurance company offers that can help bring them peace of mind. He said State Farm’s suite of products goes well beyond the home and auto protection the company is famous for, which comes as some surprise to much of the buying public.
“Most people only think of Aflac for supplemental health policies and things like that, but most insurance companies offer those types of policies, life insurance being the biggest,” he said. “State Farm is actually the largest life insurer in the United States as far as number of policies are concerned. We’re No. 1, but if you pulled 10 people off the street, maybe one would know that. Most people would name a different company.
“Our national advertising is not about life insurance because our philosophy is we talk to customers through the biggest door of the house, which is the garage door. After that, it’s our responsibility as agents to make sure all their needs are met.”
The future, Bost said, holds more of the same kind of rapid change as technology continues to evolve quickly and market forces shift.
“One of the biggest things that we’re dealing with — and I have no idea, honestly, what it looks like in five years — is this giant increase in the number of storms that we’re seeing in Arkansas,” he said. “It’s not something that you can take 10-year historical data and take actuaries and come up with prices because it’s been unprecedented.
“What this looks like for the customer is people carrying higher deductibles, especially on roofs, for wind, hail. That’s industry wide. Companies are also deciding whether or not to do business in certain states like Arkansas, where there have been so many hailstorms and, lately, the tornadoes we’ve been having. Storms over the next five to 10 years, if it continues to stay on this arc that it’s on or, heaven forbid, gets worse, it’s going to be very interesting to see how that impacts our industry.”
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