When we, Radius, use a service or product, we base are decision, not on price, but on value.  And that values stems from two things; what we are receiving for our spend, and how we are perceived by our suppliers. Let’s take our hosting partner for example (SliceHost.com), their value to us and why we spend our money with them is that we find their customer service in an industry that is not known for customer service, to be above and beyond anyone else we have ever dealt with (and we have hosted hundreds of sites for the past 12 years). They built a custom chat room application that is staffed around the clock and usually has a minimum of two techs interacting with multiple people (we want it) answering any type of question presented while others are watching, reading and asking their own questions. Including the great hosting they provide as it pertains to hardware, bandwidth, up time and all other things web host, there customer service is what we buy on and this is what we are doing with Radius. While we are customer service centric, all we need to start with are the basics and we are three steps ahead of our competitors (whom ever they may be).

Time and time we read and hear about agents interactions with a variety of vendors in our industry whom don’t really care about customer service. Of course the interaction when agents are trying to be sold is great, but once they have signed up on the dotted line, no one cares. To us that is astonishing, as we know the value of retaining a customer is cheaper and has better ROI then acquiring a new one. Let’s put this into perspective, a happy customer who speaks highly about a product, begets other prospective customers with their enthusiasm and gracious words about a product or services which marketing and advertising can’t recreate. As Insurance Agents know, a client referral is not only the cheapest lead, but the highest conversion and that is how everyone should look at it.

‘Price is what you pay, Value is what you get’ – Warren Buffett

We have to be honest, it has been a wild ride over the past few days. Many highs and lows since we launched on June 1st (what day was that again?)…The good news is that we have had a lot of response, the bad news is some of it has been negative which is to be expected. We kept asking ourselves, did we launch to early, to late, not within enough features so on and so on. We initially thought our email marketing campaign (Houston…We have Lift Off!) was going to be the biggest driver to the site, but it wasn’t. In fact, it turned out to be sub par from a response stand point compared to our previous mailings (The Bob Report – Early Emails) where we averaged roughly 40% Read Rate, the going live email has only generated roughly 20%. Of course the quantity of emails is much greater this time around and this was are largest read volume to date, but we had expected more. Then we realized that we had forgotten Marketing 101, response rate is always going to be higher with members/clients then prospects/leads (well, JS knew this all along, I just plain forgot).


Have to admit, we got anxious…Well, let me rephrase that, I got anxious and JS was solid as a rock. JS is more the ‘Cool Hand Luke’ type of guy and I lean more towards the ‘Boner From Growing Pains’, a bit all over the place. JS reminded me that the email was one component to our launch and were getting the word out via Twitter (@radiusbob), Radiusblog and oh yeah, the Live Demo’s (more on those later). So as I hounded JS with off the wall scenarios of what we needed to do, I lost sight of the fact that we needed to actually do was stay the course and work the plan we had planned. We know Radius isn’t going to be for every insurance agent out there and the fact is we don’t want it to be. We aren’t going to give Radius away for free or at dirt cheap prices. We aren’t going to have knee jerk reactions to every complaint or must have request. See, Radius is going to continue to grow, expand and improve, organically. We aren’t looking for overnight success or wanting to be everything to everyone. We want a solid group of users who are excited every time the log into their Radius Account as they know that using Radius is the easiest part of their day, not the dreaded ‘Do I have too’. We want agents to look at Radius as a valuable asset and partner for them in writing their business and managing their book. And for us, each day we further into our venture, we find ways to improve, expand and stay focused.


Now, back to our Live Demo portion of the Launch. While I knew we had a number of Live Demos schedule over the next few weeks, we had one today with the IHIAA. What a great group and show John P runs over there. The Webinar went smooth as possible, keeping in mind that most technical live demos have issues, and the Radius Demo Account didn’t flinch what so ever. ‘Big Ups’ to John P and his group for letting us take the time to showcase Radius today, it is one thing to cruz through a piece of software one has developed over the past eight months, it is another to do it live in front of a large group.


Take it from us, the days, weeks and months are going to bring many highs and even more lows…But keeping a level head, taking a step back and understand both the highs and lows will get you to a point that you aren’t affected by either. So keep a Cool Hand, like Luke and don’t be that other guy…