We caught up with the brilliant and insightful William Mobley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
William, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Is your team able to work remotely? If so, how have you made it work? What, if any, have been the pitfalls? What have been the non-obvious benefits?
Yes. Most of my team works virtually. I started my business during the “tail-end” of the pandemic, which forced me to become more flexible with the career opportunities I offered. With some having special circumstances, it’s hard to only offer the traditional “in office” worker. Our virtual system has worked well, so far, with a few hiccups in the beginning. It was difficult managing the work ethic by my team. Not knowing whether or not they were actually working, opposed to slacking off to their own personal ventures throughout the day. Since you don’t want to be taken advantage of, as a leader in your business, you tend to hold everyone to higher expectation for the convenience of working virtually. One of the biggest benefits has been the consistent moral that comes with working virtually. Being more intentional with scheduling virtual meetings and conference calls have been beneficial to keep the culture of the office in a positive direction. Some times working from home, doing the same thing every day can become monotonous. Changing things up with trainings and meetings keeps things relatively fun.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am the owner of the William Mobley State Farm Insurance Agency, where we provide services in risk management with auto, home, health, life, commercial, and pet insurance. I attended Fayetteville State University, studying in Business Marketing with a minor in digital art. I developed an affinity for leadership while at my institution, which gave me an ample amount of opportunities to help mentor develop other students in their confidence and personal development. I started my career within a managerial role for another business, and that experience helped developed me in training others, building a positive team culture, and providing excellent customer service. As the Will Mobley Agency, it’s our goal to ensure we provide our customers with the comfortable of knowing they’re properly prepared for the unknown disasters of life, while making sure they’re educated on the differences/benefits of our services and coverage we provide. Our office does our best to provide our customers with amazing customer services when changes are needed to made to their accounts or policies, and we want to make sure we’re establishing great conversations based on positive and genuine relationships. I’ve been in this industry for almost five years, and most of my team has seen just about the same level of experience. My team has done a great job with branding ourselves as a staple within our community for customers in need of insurance, while also creating a family layered culture within our office. Our office has been recognized as one of the premier agencies, within our territory, in terms of production and retention. Our goal is ensure once a customer joins our agency, they’ll never desire to leave and shop elsewhere. We strive to represent ourselves as educators rather than salesmen. It’s our intention to always do right by our customers, and confirm we’re only making changes and decisions they’re comfortable with. Since being in business, our office has been able to provide hundreds of families with coverage in life insurance for their loved ones, which is a large contributor to our team’s success.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
My journey to the insurance industry was quite the interesting one. After graduating college, I started my career in the industrial coatings industry with The Sherwin-Williams. The Sherwin-Williams Company was my only career offer right before graduating, and I wanted to showcase my appreciation and loyalty by climbing up the ranks and sticking with them for years to come. After obtaining multiple promotions and being relocated between the states of NC, SC, CT, and GA, I found myself yearning for a change in scenery for something that was more relatable to my character and personal professional aspirations. I eventually was reached out to by a State Farm recruiter on the opportunity to open and start my own State Farm agency. The process was pretty rigorous and demanding, and as an external candidate with no prior industry experience, it caused for me to lean on a lot of skills that I hadn’t had to use in years. I was required to obtain my insurance licenses within a matter of a few weeks. I needed to create and present a business plan to the executives within the company to showcase my knowledge, talent, and skills to run a business in a market I’ve never lived in. My initial opportunity for opening a location in NC was denied, which had me immensely distraught. After the hard work on preparing for that opportunity with my time and effort, I felt humbled and ready to take the typical pathway of working in another agent’s office to gain experience. It wasn’t until another opportunity became available for me to start an opportunity in Atlanta, GA is when I finally received my breakthrough in the industry, and was bound to start my career with owning my agency with State Farm.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
One of the best strategies for growing your business is ultimately to invest into your marketing in the right areas. You have to spend money to make money, and in these early years in my career, I’m content with living life frugally to build a stronger foundation financially. Growing my clientele comes from building brand loyalty. In the age of technology, it would be extremely difficult to succeed in any business without having some exposure and footprint in the digital marketing world. Utilizing ads with Google analytics, social media, websites, and marketing trends to expose my brand to the community is one of the best ways for your customers to find you. Once you’ve gained customers, working off of referrals by providing great customer service is the best natural method of establishing an amazing customer experience. Creating really good relationships first, rather than just trying to sell services to customers helps them feel welcomed and appreciated. Not everyone wants to be sold. If you’re able to build a positive business relationship founded on trust, you’re less likely to have customers that are only solely with you based on your costs. The method, ideally, is “Price vs. Quality.” You want to leave your clients with a lasting positive impression, and not have them feeling as though they’re just another person walking through your doors. Customers are more loyal to establishments and businesses that lean on better quality practices, opposed to price. It only takes the next business over to have a more competitive price for a customer to change from you. Whereas having a specific niche and relationship within your community motivates customers to retain their business with you. Some times, no matter the price.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://insuredbymobley.com
- Instagram: insuredbymobley
- Facebook: Will Mobley State Farm
- Linkedin: William Mobley
