020: Building Pipelines, the Hard Market and Business Planning - Brendan McManus

On today's episode, we’re chatting to CEO of PIB Group, Brendan McManus. Brendan has over 42 year’s experience at senior level across both insurance and broking. Brendan shares with us his varied career history and talks to us about some of the challenges he’s faced. We also discuss why Brendan thinks it’s important to have both long term and short term planning in place and how he thinks the economy will recover from the pandemic. LEARNING OBJECTIVES: The lockdown has made insurance industry businesses more efficient and better serviceable with technology and improved processes. Starting with the end in mind is how you write a convincible, achievable and compelling plan. Having a solid business based on culture allows entrepreneurial people to get back to what they’re good at which is focusing on clients. There’s a big difference between insurance and broking rather than just being one sector. One sells a product, the other sells a service. The great thing about the insurance broking sector is the immediacy. The sector can do something today that will improve results. A question we should continuously ask ourselves when planning is: ‘’what do I need to do today to achieve my long term goal?’’. Since the pandemic, our attitude both in work and personal life, to technology has changed dramatically and traditional working environments will be a thing of the past. BEST MOMENTS: ‘’…having a plan and sticking to it has always been a core part of how I've managed myself really, I think you have to be driven by something. My drive is always write a plan and stick to it. Could you say you're going to do something by the end of 2019? …You get up in the morning and you say, what am I going to do today that gets me to that plan in 2019? You don't wait till the end of 2019, the last quarter, and start acting on it, you do it every day.’’ ‘’…our whole goal has been to take the administration and the management and the governance away from vendors and let them look after their clients and to do what they've always been really good at, which is grow their businesses entrepreneurially. What got in the way as they grew their businesses was administration, management, HR and regulation… and we take responsibility for that. They get back to their core, which is servicing clients and so the whole business has been based on freeing people up to go back to what they really good at which is focusing on the clients.’’ ‘’…a lot of people talk about the being an insurance sector. I don't think there is. I think there's the insurance companies that provide a product and they are balance sheet businesses. They get up in the morning worrying about protecting the balance sheet, whereas insurance broking distribution tends to be about people. It tends to be about hiring and retaining really good people who can sell and service their clients so it's not a uniform sector… they have very, very different goals.’’ ‘’I think overall, people benefit not just from the formal training, but from the sponsorship and just the environment they work in.’’ RESOURCES: PIB Group Website: https://www.pibgroup.co.uk/about-pib-group/ ABOUT THE HOST Sarah Myerscough is the Sales and Marketing Director of Boston Tullis Group. The founder of The Insurance Brokers Podcast, she brings a wealth of marketing experience and a fresh perspective on marketing in the insurance sector. Boston Tullis works with insurance brokers to offer solutions to business development ceilings, particularly in the rapidly developing fields of video marketing and thought leadership. If you would like Sarah to help you develop an integrated marketing strategy, using state of the art concepts, then please book a free 20 min call via Calendly    Website: https://bostontullis.co.uk/ Evaluation Link: https://s.bostontullis.co.uk/s/podcastevaluation   ABOUT THE GUEST Brendan McManus is CEO of PIB Group, having previously served as CEO of insurance brokers Willis UK, Giles Group and Gallagher UK. He