MARKETING AGENCY OF THE MONTH
Consultative selling highlights this
Dayton agency's professionalism
By Dennis H. Pillsbury
When Daniel Brower opened the doors of his agency in 1935, he couldn't have envisioned its transformation into a regional powerhouse with a staff of 90 insurance professionals in the Dayton (Ohio) home office and 20 in Cincinnati. Brower Insurance Agency, LLC, boasts total revenue of $14.3 million, with approximately 25% coming from employee benefits and most of the balance (more than 90%) coming from commercial property/casualty business. The agency has a diverse ownership with 14 principals, none of whom is related.
We talked to two of the principals--John Watson, CPCU, and David Griffin, CPCU, AFSB, CIC--to find out how this success was achieved.
Professionalism at every level
"Our tag line is 'The value is what we know®,'" Dave comments, "and we take that very seriously."
John explains, "Our selling is consultative. All our people are professionals and we approach both our clients and our companies with that in mind. We don't sell insurance; we sell our knowledge and our high quality customer service. Our goal is to guide each of our customers through the insurance maze on an ongoing basis. We regularly assess and reassess our clients' goals and needs.
"We also work with sophisticated risks to design coverages that can fit virtually any situation. And we really put our money where our mouth is when it comes to service. Our ratio of service people to producers is very high based on benchmarking data."
Dave adds, "We don't just depend on gleaning knowledge from engaging in the business of insurance. We go out and seek knowledge. Professional designations are encouraged for all of our employees and are expected for all our principals. We also encourage our employees by paying for their insurance education. If you look at our staff, many have designations.
"That includes three CPAs," Dave continues. "One is a principal and serves as the head of the bond department. Surety is an accounting-intensive area and it really helps to have CPAs on staff to work in that area. We also have an in-house loss control specialist to help our clients mitigate risk. That really ties in to our tag line and helps to set us apart from the competition."
Growth is primarily internal
Brower Insurance Agency's first growth spurt was in the late 1940s when Ed Zwiesler acquired the agency. In the 1970s, Chuck Castle, CPCU, ARM, and Norm Eckstein, CPCU, AFSB, joined the agency and were the driving force for quite some time, including involvement in two mergers with Dayton Insurance Agency in 1984 and with the Leonard Insurance Agency in 1993. However, most of the growth has been internally generated.
"We always had a significant presence in construction and do a lot of surety business," John says. "Over the last 25 years, we also began to develop other specialty areas, including tool and die manufacturing, health care, trucking, municipalities and school districts. With the exception of construction, which has always been big, our specialties were started by individual producers who wrote one account and then recognized the opportunity and started adding on.
"It's all been relationship driven," John continues. "We're active in our clients' associations and in the community and develop most of our business from referrals and networking."
Brower has three CPAs on staff: Brenda Upham, CPA, Accounting Manager; Jennifer Salm, CPA, Bond Department Supervisor; and Christopher M. McAtee, CPA, CMA, Principal.
Dave points out that the agency uses both individual and team selling, depending on the size and sophistication of the account. Team selling has been particularly important over the last decade as employee benefits grew to become a prominent part of the agency's portfolio.
"We recognized that our 4,000 commercial property/casualty clients represented built-in relationships for selling employee benefits," Dave says. "We brought in expertise from outside to spearhead that effort about 18 years ago."
"He was our only producer on the employee benefits side at that time," John remembers. "Today, three of our owners come from the employee benefits side and we have eight producers in that area, including a 401(k) specialist. We also have a human resources consultant available to our clients on a fee basis."
John adds that the agency is a Zywave® partner and that "has helped us provide value-added employee benefits services to our clients." (Zywave, Inc., offers a comprehensive line of technology-based employee benefits and property and casualty communication, administration, and claims analysis tools for insurance broker partners.)
The Benefits Team includes (seated, from left): Cathy M. Hudson, CPIW, Group Claims Manager; and Tiffany M. Norman, Benefits Account Technician. Standing, from left are: John A. Barron, Jr., CLU, Principal; Vita Takiff, Group Account Manager; and Julie Beilharz, Group Account Technician.
In addition, Brower joined Assurex Global two years ago. Assurex is the world's largest privately held risk management, commercial insurance and employee benefits brokerage group. John expects their affiliation with Assurex to prove beneficial in expanding markets and customer service. "It's a great organization that already has brought advantages to us."
Peer pressure
"We have a very competitive producer force that is driven by peer pressure," John admits. "Our ambitious sales goals are established in consultation with the individual producer, which includes peer review. We are fortunate to have highly motivated individuals who thrive on competition. Of course, they also are motivated by our ownership structure, which allows producers who grow their books to a certain level and achieve a certain level of professionalism to purchase ownership."
Will Standley and Carmelita Merrick work out of the Cincinnati office.
"That really serves to differentiate us from the competition," Dave notes. "It has made it possible for us to recruit some of the best producers to our ranks. We also have a bonus plan for non-producers that is tied to growth and profitability. In addition, we try to promote from within and provide opportunity at all levels. We encourage personal responsibility and are fortunate to have a staff of people who enjoy responsibility. And it must be working. We have a very high employee retention rate. Many of our people have been with us for 10 years or more."
John says the biggest problem isn't keeping people but finding people. "We've brought in people from all different sources. They've come from insurance companies, via referrals or we might hear about someone and go after him or her. There hasn't been any one area that's proven best."
Andrea Zavakos, SPHR, Director of HR Consulting, provides human resources consulting to Brower clients.
John continues that the high employee retention coupled with the peer pressure to be the best results in exceptional service to clients. "As I mentioned earlier, we have a very high ratio of service people to producers. But that's only part of the story. The real story is how motivated our people are to provide excellent service thanks to their strong sense of responsibility."
The agency brings the same emphasis on relationships that it has with its clients to its insurance company partners. "We don't represent a high number of insurers for an agency of our size," John points out. "Instead, we build personal relationships within the relatively few highly professional insurance companies we use."
Brower Insurance Agency Principals John Watson, CPCU, and David Griffin, CPCU, AFSB, CIC.
Dave adds that the agency works very hard at "finding the best, financially stable companies."
Internal efficiencies
"One of the most recent changes that we've made," John says, "is focusing on improving internal efficiencies. As we grew in size, we recognized that we needed stronger internal management but hadn't been paying as much attention to that area as we should have. When we were a smaller operation, lack of consistency internally didn't have that much of an impact. But as we grew, it became clear that we needed to become consistent and efficient in all areas so that we could provide the best service to our clients. It was imperative--no matter whom a client spoke to--that the answers that client received were the same and the level of service was consistent throughout the agency.
"We recently hired several people whose principal function and expertise is managing people," John continues. "These included a chief operating officer; a training compliance coordinator; a human resources professional who does double duty as our human resource person and as a consultant to our clients; and a customer service manager. These people have been trained to manage people and they're all there to support internal operations and our people. We see this as a very important step in managing our current growth and making it possible for us to grow even faster as our efficiencies become reflected in our bottom line."
John concludes: "Change is a fundamental part of the way our clients do business. We recognize that it's our duty to change along with them so we can provide solid strategies, excellent products and rigorous risk management to help propel them to the top of their markets.
"When we say that the value is what we know, we don't just mean our understanding of risk and insurance, but the understanding and knowledge that we develop about our customers' business in order to provide the highest level of service and the most appropriate coverages."
It is this attention to customers that has led to Brower's success and to our recognition of the agency as our Marketing Agency of the Month. *
