Axiom shows why some referral channels compete on the referrer's time rather than your price, using Enterprise Rent-A-Car's insurance-replacement business and its adjuster-booking system, and gives operators a way to sort which of their referrers chooses on convenience and which on cost.
She called three times to book one car
An insurance adjuster in the early 1990s has a straightforward claim on her desk. A driver has been rear-ended, the car is going into a shop for eleven days, the policy covers a rental. She needs a car for him today.
She calls a rental branch. Whoever answers cannot book it. She calls back. The second person cannot book it either. On the third or fourth try she reaches somebody who can. That is three calls to start one rental, and the rental has eleven days left to run. It gets extended when the shop slips, queried, closed out. Every one of those is her phone again. That is a normal day for her, and she has dozens of open claims.
In 1994 Geico Direct and Safeco went to Enterprise Rent-A-Car and told them the phone calls were the problem, not the daily rate. Enterprise built a system to take them out. Across the life of a rental, by their own count, it removed an average of 8.5 of them.
She was not spending her own money
The daily rate came off her employer's books. She wasn't measured on it. By Friday she couldn't have told you what it was. The phone calls came out of her afternoon, and she felt every one. Eight and a half of them at three minutes each is half an hour, per car, and she was not booking one car a week. So she chose whichever branch cost her the least time, rather than the one charging the least money.
That gap decides whether any of this applies to you. Where the person who picks you also pays you, price competes. Where they are spending somebody else's money, your rate barely registers and your convenience is close to everything.
The same three calls, in your business
It is Tuesday and a tenant's kitchen sink is backing up. The property manager calls your shop. Whoever picks up cannot tell her when anyone can get there. She calls again after lunch. On the third try she reaches your dispatcher and gets a window of Thursday, sometime.
None of that is work she is paid for. Her fee is a percentage of the rent she collects, the same whether that unit needs nothing all year or needs you six times. The repair goes on the owner's statement. The three calls come out of her Tuesday. She is your adjuster. So is the restoration adjuster, the facilities manager, the warranty coordinator, and the realtor who needs a listing ready by Friday and is not paying your invoice either.
| Property manager billing an owner | Measured on rent collected, not work coordinated | Run it |
| Insurance restoration adjuster | Claims closed and cycle time. The carrier already set your rate | Run it |
| Realtor prepping a listing | Closings. Every day of delay is her money | Run it |
| Facilities manager with a budget line | Budget variance, so partly price sensitive after all | Worth a month |
| Home warranty company | Sets your rate as a condition of entry and dispatches by algorithm | Skip it |
Take the biggest name in the first group. A touch is any moment your work costs them time: every call to reach you, every call they take from their own customer asking where you are, every re-sent address, every invoice returned because the unit number was wrong.
You are paying three thousand dollars a year for the thing she notices least. Do not read this as license to raise your price. The referrer does not feel your rate, but the payer does, and the payer is usually a carrier with a schedule. The move is that you stop buying the referral with a discount nobody ever noticed.
Stand in the room in 1994
That tells you what holds the position now, and it is not the software. It is national coverage no competitor can match, and none of that is for sale to you. So be clear about what you are buying. Taking work off a referrer's desk will win you a channel, but it will not keep you in it. Assume anything you build is copyable inside a year and plan on having to be first again.
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Published with this issue · the four moves, the three text messages ready to send, and how each referrer is really paid. Axiom Research · The Operator's Brief · No. 02