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Marketing Agency of the Month Stayin' on Main Street BB&L stresses external consistency and internal change By Dennis H. Pillsbury
When Robert F. Bouvier founded his agency in West Hartford, Connecticut, in 1959, it was a typical Main Street agency that provided protection to the people and businesses in the area. Bob was well known and respected in the community and the agency quickly became a household name in its marketing area. That success led to rapid growth primarily through acquisition, as over 20 agencies were purchased, coupled with a significant increase in organic production. However, with the growth came the growing pains. More employees and more offices (there now are six) meant an increased need for space and an integrated automation system. Today, the agency now known as Bouvier Beckwith & Lennox, Inc. (BB&L), has new leadership as the second generation took the reins on May 1 and is working to deal with the growing pains while still remaining the agency of choice for people and businesses in the area. The agency has experienced exponential growth, nearly equally balanced with 55% commercial and 45% personal on the property/casualty side. It also has a strong employee benefits book. “We had to change our operating philosophy,” says Rich Bouvier, CIC, director and producing agent. “In essence, we needed to change from a family operation to a regional sales driven organization. The first step we took in that direction was hiring a chief operating officer who would be responsible for all aspects of carrier, employee, and acquisition relationships as well as day-to-day management of our entire organization. We brought in an experienced outside person, Ed Scannell III, CPCU, who was well respected in the industry.”
The founder’s son, Robert (Rob) Bouvier, president, adds, “We also brought in an outside expert to guide us through the transition and help us identify areas where we needed to make changes. It’s interesting that I found the expert when I was at a Travelers Leadership Conference in San Francisco and heard a presentation by Lloyd ‘Skip’ Daigle and decided that was the guy we needed. It turns out that Skip lived and worked right next door at Travelers in Hartford.” Serendipity works in strange ways. Skip’s message is simple: “Procedures must match philosophy. Many agencies at their core really are not growth oriented,” Skip continues. “So if long-term growth is not part of their philosophy, then a change in procedures is not going to help. It begins with the overall operating philosophy and that filters down to management style, job design, workflow, and procedures. The new leadership at BB&L was committed to long-term growth and making the changes necessary to achieve that.” Working with Travelers’ local field staff, Skip guides agencies through a procedure to help them achieve long-term profitable growth, knowing that as an agency’s total business grows, so does Travelers’ piece of the pie. This process requires a great amount of trust on the part of the agency. It has to share a wide variety of data with Skip and, since he does come from Travelers, some agencies might be reluctant to provide some of that information. The necessary data includes the total number of customers, the commissions, data on staff, including length of service, training, etc. Management also is put through an exercise to determine if the agency really is ready to grow. From that, the agency’s SWOT is identified. That’s the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Then there is a follow-up meeting with the board to discuss what actions need to be taken to overcome the weaknesses and threats and take advantage of the strengths and opportunities. “I remember the next meeting where we sat down with the branch managers and supervisors,” Skip says. “We were suggesting actions that the agency could take to overcome the 10 weaknesses that had been identified. I noticed that Tom (Desmarais) was starting to smile and the smile was getting broader as we continued. Then Tom got up and left the room and came back with a White Paper that presented the actions they already had taken. Based on the SWOT identification exercise, they’d already implemented new procedures that addressed eight of the 10 weaknesses. That’s the first time that had ever happened. “When I got back to the office, I told Jennifer Wislocki, our manager of corporate communications and the person who writes a lot of what I take credit for, that she had to talk to the agency. She was equally impressed with what they had accomplished and reported on their accomplishments to Rough Notes magazine.” Hiring a COO and getting some business coaching from Travelers were enormous steps toward accomplishing the agency management’s goal of “improving and sustaining organic top-line growth through a combination of cross-selling, account rounding, and new business production,” according to Rich. “At the same time,” he continues, “we understand and appreciate the fact that our business will not thrive unless we maintain a world-class standard of customer service. That is the core of our new philosophy and we are in the process of making it a reality.” The addition of a COO and a coach were only the beginning of the transition. At the same time, the partners implemented changes in management responsibilities, automation, employee compensation, education, marketing, and location, to name just a few. “We’ve always focused on grow, grow, grow. But we never took the time to be introspective,” Rob Bouvier says. “Now, we’re taking a look at ourselves and determining not just ways to grow, but to make certain that we’re doing it effectively and in keeping with our long-range philosophy. Changes—both big and little “One of our biggest needs was to migrate to a sales organization,” he continues. “To accomplish that, we needed to take administration tasks away from our branches so they would be freed up to focus on sales.” The partners were given defined management roles that emphasized their individual strengths, with Dave Pilon responsible for sales; Tom Desmarais for financial; Ed for operational; and Rich for technology. Those four report directly to Rob.
The agency also was reorganized into teams led by production managers, with each team having new business production, retention, and profitability goals. Branches operate as a single team. To support this effort, BB&L revised employee compensation so that all people in the agency would be involved in the effort to improve organic growth and to promote the team concept. In addition to the base salary, compensation for production managers and CSRs also includes new business commissions and profit sharing. The rule of thumb, according to Tom, who is vice president, is that new business commissions are paid on “new business that develops from efforts of team members to bring in clients who, without the team member’s direct involvement, otherwise would not have purchased their insurance from our agency.” Profit sharing is distributed to members of teams that meet overall objectives and is reduced or eliminated if a team falls short of its objectives. Team goals include one-, three- and five-year objectives, Tom points out. To make certain that teams and team members know where they stand, the agency instituted performance measures that are communicated to each team separately and monitored on a monthly or quarterly basis. As Tom explains, “You can’t manage if you can’t measure.” In addition, monthly sales meetings are held and include all branch sales managers. Rich notes that the addition of “sales” to the title was one of the small changes the agency made that made a big difference. “There was a real change in attitude. It did wonders for the morale.” Compensation also was reviewed to make certain that it adequately rewarded people for the work they did. “We did an analysis of the workflow to employees by policy to make certain that our compensation was proper,” Rob notes. “We want to keep everyone happy. We also continually make certain that our compensation package is better than the industry. We’re aggressive on getting good people and that takes a good pay and benefits package. In addition, we accommodate the time needs of our people.” Another big change occurred in the area of technology. Rich points out, “We always dodged the bullet somehow and have been successful using a paper system. The agencies we acquired had various management systems and operated independently. Clearly, we weren’t going to become the administrative hub for those offices if we didn’t have a single agency management system. So we’ve gone to an Applied Systems management system for all our offices and are currently doing data merges so we’ll all be on one system by the first of the year.”
Tom says, “We’re also concentrating on niche markets in which we’ve become successful. This allows us to be more efficient. We have a couple of niches where we have a regional presence, including many forms of habitational coverage.” The agency also has a program for accountants who are members of the Connecticut Society of CPAs. Meanwhile, the agency is moving to a new location on January 1, 2006, in order to accommodate the growth. But it hasn’t left Main Street. “We’re a Main Street business,” says Rich, “and every agency we’ve acquired is on Main Street. We decided to stay on Main Street to serve our community.” “We grew up in this town and we intend to stay here,” Rob adds. “We were able to purchase a building right across the street from the building where my dad first started in the insurance business. I’m a former mayor of West Hartford. I can’t see us ever leaving.” “This continues to be a work in progress,” Tom concludes. But it has already shown positive results. “The growth for the first few months of this year has been impressive. We were 85% ahead of last year in May and 50% in June.” Rob adds, “None of this could have taken place without the guidance and leadership of our founder. Bob was willing to let us try different things and has always been supportive of our initiatives. He built a strong, vibrant agency and we’re just building on that.” Rough Notes is pleased to recognize Bouvier Beckwith & Lennox, Inc., as this month’s Marketing Agency of the Month. * |
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