Helping People With a Purpose With Dennis Baltz

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Dennis Baltz, executive vice president at Willis Towers Watson. Dennis has a stewardship mindset which fits very well into the risk and insurance industry. Helping protect clients from things like cyber risk is both rewarding and extremely valuable to clients.

Mo prompted Dennis with a question about how he goes about developing relationships in more of a personal, human way:

Dennis responded:

“I think the first thing is really understanding how folks think and we’ve spent a lot of time at WTW trying to prepare for business development opportunities and I think we can overanalyze that a lot of the time. I’ve been really a bit of perspective in my walk, thinking through there’s really only been three questions that you need to answer for prospective clients to become a client. I’ll be happy to walk you through that Mo. Number one is, “Do I like you?” Very foundational and fundamental, but, “Do I like you?” Number two is, “Can I trust you?”… Number three, “Can you help me?”… So if we think about all the various things that go into a large corporate risk management and engagement. We tend to think about all the variables from the decision-makers, but I really think that if we can focus on the very simple and, as you’ve said for a number of years now, simple always wins… That really is the guiding principle for all of my new business pursuits these days.”

Mo followed up:

“How do you become likable?”

Dennis responded:

“It’s a fun thing to look for that uncommon commonality. So I try to connect with folks on shared passions. One of the things that I’ve learned to do in the last couple of years is if I’m going on a trip, with my family or maybe it’s a guys’ ski trip. I go ahead and just put that on the subject line of my out-of-office message. I think I’ve probably learned this from you Mo in conversation, but it works. In January I was with my daughter Rachael and we went to the Orange Bowl, and I just simply put, “Hey I’m out of the office till next Thursday, or you know whatever it is, and I’m in Miami at the Orange Bowl.” I had a number of folks write me and say, “Hey I will be there and I would love to see you,” and that door got opened up with just that subject line going out to hundreds of emails we get each day. It’s a great chance to connect with folks and you might actually have some fun along the way yourself.

Mo followed up:

“How do you convey and communicate trust?”

Dennis responded:

“I think reliability. Going back to my newsletter. It comes out every month and folks know that it’s going to be issued and I don’t miss a month. The same could be said for a follow-up after a meeting. You’ve always going to get a recap from us from a meeting we had or a quick call we had, or a video call or a meeting. It also comes with an agenda. That’s one of the things in terms of just that dynamic or meeting prep. Just being really ready for a meeting. I’ve got a really big meeting Friday with a Fortune 100, so I just challenged our team to make sure that our agenda was on point and that it was in good shape before Friday. So it’s the pre-game and the post-game.

Dive deeper into Dennis’s last point of, “How can you help me?” in the full video here.

There are three questions that all prospects think about when they are making a decision about you: “Do I like you?”, “Do I trust you?”, and “Can you help me?”. Those three questions are the guiding principle in all of Dennis’s business development pursuits.

Thanks for reading!

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-Mo