Helping people a big motivator as an agent and firefighter

By Robert Williams

Editor

Bert Doll is the new face of United Community Insurance (UCI) in Frazee after taking over for Rita Stelzer at the end of June as the lead agent. Stelzer retired after 30 years at UCI as an insurance agent.

Doll is a native of Perham and graduated from Perham High School in 1993. He went to postsecondary school at Northwest Technical College in Detroit Lakes for sales, marketing and management. 

Doll pursued a career in the restaurant business starting at Strom’s Cafe through the transition to Lakes Cafe in Perham. He moved to Frazee to work for Chuck and Brenda Minge at the Cedar Inn Cafe from 1998-2001. A faulty water heater installation caused the Cedar Inn to be lost to a fire on December 26, 2001.

Doll, a career firefighter, joined the Perham Fire Department in 1998 and helped fight the fire, but was not working at the Cedar Inn during that time. He spent the next decade working for Reinhart Foodservice in food sales.

“My goal was to transition into insurance,” said Doll.

Each application he submitted for an insurance job came with a mandatory relocation to locations like Hibbing and Brainerd.

“My wife and I had just gotten married and we were building a house just outside of town here,” said Doll. “I wanted to stick around the area so I took a part-time gig that I thought was going to be part-time at Norseman Motors selling cars.

He stayed there full-time for nearly a decade.

“So I sold cars for nine years,’ said Doll.

Eventually, Country Financial provided an opportunity back into the insurance field and Doll worked in the training department for the next five years. Wanting to expand his knowledge base he moved on to Dixon Insurance working on commercial trucking insurance.

When Stelzer retired, United Community Insurance approached Doll to gather his interest. The choice to move was an easy one.

“Rita did such a great job with her customers that it was a perfect fit,” said Doll. “I like the community and Rita had a ton of business in Detroit Lakes, Frazee, Vergas and the surrounding areas,” said Doll.

“Fifty percent of my time is getting to know people,” said Doll. “We’re not doing any insurance work or changes. We’re just updating things. The nice thing about working out of this office compared to where I worked before is I have tons of different options.”

For customers, presenting multiple options is the best way to find the optimal coverage in a market that has become less customer-friendly.

 “Insurance has changed, not the coverages, but the price and what they’re paying for,” he said. “The prices have skyrocketed.”                        

Doll noted that markets here in Minnesota are much better for consumers compared to other areas of the country like Florida or California.

A big trend that has changed in insurance over the past decade is that policies are no longer in place for repairs and more for covering catastrophic damage. 

“A lot of insurance companies are changing from doing 100 percent replacement costs, especially on roofs, and there is a lot that contributes to that. One of the things that I saw right away when I got here was we had some hail storms come through and there were construction companies that travel from state to state, from all over the place, and they’ll drive by your house and say you’ve got damage on it. Do you have insurance on it? Well, the insurance company does all the work, gets you everything to submit a claim and then they have to pay for the fixing of the roof.”

Many of those companies are no longer covering full replacement costs for roofs over 10-years-old. 

“Now we’re putting a brand new roof on a house that the shingles were 20-years-old anyway and they were still working fine; now they’re damaged,” Doll said. “So they need to be replaced. Why are we having to put brand new ones on and spend $30,000 when we should just give them a portion of that. I think it’s the door-to-door folks that come in from all over the company that thrive on individual people.”

These are some of the many reasons it pays to have an insurance agent on your side when needed.

“And to gather all the evidence too, otherwise, you’re just dealing with one piece and one claim and they just want to know the dollars and sense,” said Doll. “They don’t want to hear your story. That’s what I’m here for, I can explain it too. Most of the companies we work with are pretty local,  but Progressive’s a national company. It can be somebody you’re talking to in Cleveland, Ohio and they don’t know our area. That’s why you have an agent who can help you out.”

Helping people is one reason why Doll chose to go into insurance.

“I like working with people,” he said. “When I was considering taking the job my wife said, ‘This is right up your alley. This is what you’ve worked for your whole life. You’ve gone through all these different steps and done all of these different things to be in this position, in this office, in this town with the bank right here too because it just fits.’ If I get a fire call I’m a block away.”

Doll has been with the Frazee Fire Department for 18 years. He always wanted to be a fireman since childhood.

“I literally saw an ad in the paper that said they were looking for firefighters,” he said. “The reason I got into the fire department was I thought it was cool. Then, once I started to do that job then it was all about helping people. That’s the most rewarding thing—helping someone on their worst day. You can make it better by being kind and doing something to help them out.”

Doll specializes in personal and commercial Insurance. He can be reached at his office on West Main Avenue in Frazee, via email bertd@unitedcommunityinsurance.com, or phone (218) 334-6551.