Marketing Agency of the Month

Coaching success

New business mantra fuels growth at Cobbs, Allen & Hall

By Dennis H. Pillsbury

From left: Grantland Rice, III, President of Cobbs, Allen & Hall, Incorporated, and Bruce Denson, Chairman and CEO, stand next to the photo of the children from the Big Oak Ranch, a home for abused, abandoned and neglected children. The photo is proudly displayed in the agency’s foyer and represents one of the charities to which CAH is committed. The agency also is one of the largest contributors to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, as well as Big Oak Ranch.

Cobbs, Allen & Hall, Incorporated (CAH), Birmingham, Alabama, has been around since 1887. Since that time it has enjoyed a good reputation in its community and that, along with good service, helped it to survive. But it was a “sleepy little agency,” as current President Grantland Rice III phrases it, that had developed a culture that maintained the status quo and lacked the aggressive sales mentality that is needed to compete for new business. “Our staff was excellent. They focused on providing top-notch service to clients, but they weren’t thinking about production.”

That’s how it was when Grantland purchased the agency on April 30, 1992. At that time, the agency had $1.2 million in revenue. “We had to retrain the staff and the customers,” Grantland notes. “Because the focus was primarily on service, there were problems with other aspects of the agency business. Receivables, for example, were in terrible shape. And this was a reflection of the agency’s service culture. The staff wanted to accommodate the clients’ needs so they weren’t at all strict about collecting on invoices or statements. But we had to drive home the fact that, in addition to being an important provider of service to the community, we were also a business.”

Since 1992, “revenue has grown at an average annual increase of more than 20% and exceeded $19.5 million in 2004,” according to Bruce Denson, chairman and CEO. “And that growth has been mostly organic. There was one merger. We purchased an Augusta agency that is currently responsible for $2 million in revenue. We also have an interest in a wholesale operation in Atlanta that produced approximately $3 million in revenue. We started that from scratch four years ago.” In addition to the retail branch office in Augusta, CAH also has retail branches in Atlanta, Gadsden and Nashville.

In-house coaches Margaret Ann Pyburn, CIC, Vice President, and Frank M. Alverson, Business Development Director, seated, help outside coach Marc A. Corsini of the Corsini Consulting Group instill the sales culture at CAH.

From acquirer...

Grantland Rice was in the corporate travel business with his dad until 1991 when “my dad got a good offer for the company. We started looking for a business opportunity and looked at many different possibilities. Insurance looked good because, in many ways, it had some interesting similarities with the travel business: The assets are your people; relationships are important and, in the case of Cobbs, Allen & Hall, Incorporated, we would be calling on the corporate buyer. There was a very good group of people here and that was the key decision maker for us.”

Grantland notes, “Once I got here, I started having fun. It’s all about the people and it’s been great watching them grow and succeed. It took about 18 months to get the house in order. Clients and staff understood the need for CAH to operate as a business. Everyone benefited. We sent quality business to our carriers and they responded. Our clients benefited because we were able to offer more and better coverages. Our staff benefited as profit grew.”

…To leader

“A few years ago, we were approached by several banks interested in acquiring the agency. They offered us a lot of money,” Bruce points out. “We decided that we would listen to them, but then found that this was too exciting and too much fun to leave.We adopted a new goal: to reach $50 million in revenue by 2011. That represents growth of 15% a year and one acquisition.”

At some point, Grantland and Bruce changed from agency managers to leaders of an agency dedicated to remaining independent and continuing to grow. Bruce, who was at McGriff Seibels & Williams, was brought into the agency on January 1, 1993. “We’re each other’s right arm,” Bruce says. “I’m mainly involved in sales management and implementing our vision for growth. Grantland gets involved in administration, keeping the day-to-day operations running smoothly. We complement each other perfectly. And we’ve been blessed with awesome people.”

Producer Brian W. Tanner, CIC, (right) reviews current production and “best bets” for sales goals with Marc Corsini.

The sales coach

One of the principal reasons for the success enjoyed by CAH is its emphasis on “a progressive and aggressive sales culture that really focuses on new business,” Bruce says. “Seven years ago, we instituted a coaching program that is the foundation for our new business growth. We use Marc Corsini as our outside coach. In addition, we have two inside coaches—Frank Alverson and Margaret Ann Pyburn, who also is head of personal lines.”

Under the coaching program, all the young producers (those who are producing less than three times their pay) meet with the coaches regularly and “go over their best bets, which are the accounts due in three months or less,” Bruce points out. The meetings are mandatory. Bruce continues by noting that the coaches really are “accountability partners. They go over current production as well as look to the future. If you’re not performing, you know it.”

Property/casualty producers are salaried based on the previous year’s production, while benefits producers are on a draw. “We also have new business bonuses during the year and at year-end,” Bruce notes. “There are some pretty meaningful contests. We always like to focus on new business.” To add to this emphasis, the agency has a sales meeting every Monday. All branches call in and “we go over what they have written during the week,” Bruce says. “It only takes about 15 minutes, but it’s another way we emphasize accountability and the strong sales culture. We also reinforce this with quarterly sales meetings and an annual awards dinner, which all 150 people in the agency attend. It’s held at a really nice club here in Birmingham and is a fun event. We give out our Grizzly award to the person with the most growth. The award is a statue of a surrealistic Grizzly that I purchased on a trip to Santa Fe.”

Keeping current clients

“We send in a team of people when approaching large prospects to emphasize our capabilities,” Bruce continues. “We’re a big proponent of Zywave as both an aid to attracting new business and a value-added service to retain current clients. (Zywave provides a suite of insurance, employee benefits, and human resources tools and information.) It allows us to put together a professional presentation. We’re competing against some major brokers for some large prospects and this gives us a leg up.

Adding new clients fuels growth only when there is a high level of retention. Current clients are the base and “we recognize the need to provide significant value-added service to keep clients that have been loyal to us,” Bruce says. “One of the most important steps we have taken is to invest back in the agency. We’ve brought in claims and loss control people to help our clients manage and mitigate risk.

“We also invest in our technology to make certain that it provides the services we need to stay in contact with our clients and our companies. We use Applied Systems, as our agency management software, and have been with them forever.”

In the end, it’s all about the people

This year’s recipient of the Grizzly Award, given to the person with the most growth over the year, is Jack Welbourn, ARM.

“We have a lot of great people,” Bruce notes. “It’s really been fun watching our people grow and prosper, especially the talented young people who have joined the agency. And that’s really important to me. We need to constantly add new blood to the agency. When we looked at our goal to reach $50 million, we realized that we would need 100 production people to meet that goal.

“We’re always looking to add professional, motivated people to our staff. I have to continually focus on that. I talk to company people, to headhunters and to our own people. We’ve hired a number of children of the people who were already here. They want to be here, which indicates that the parent who is working here must have good things to say about us.”

Grantland points to one example where the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. “Robert Berman runs our middle market area and has a million-dollar book of business. His dad, Alan Berman, runs the Gadsden office and has the highest profit numbers in the agency overall—any number you want to look at, he’s at the top. He has an efficient, effective operation and Robert shows the same talent. They’re both fine people and good team members.

“There are so many to mention. Jack Welbourn has done extremely well running our Atlanta office. Mike Carraway and Hal Cohen started the Augusta agency we acquired in 1999 and they’ve been terrific. Crawford McInnis runs our national accounts operation and has helped us land accounts that often went to the big brokers. Crawford has experience in the captive area and we anticipate that could be important in the future, especially when the market hardens.

“What makes me proudest,” Grantland continues, “is that they’ve succeeded on their own. We don’t micromanage. We give our people the resources and tools to succeed and let them go out and make mistakes, try new things. And, of course, we reward them.”

A few of the people who make CAH a success are (seated from left): Margaret Ann Pyburn, CIC; Mary Hall, Vice President; (standing): Jack Welbourn, ARM; Scott T. Cobb, CIC, ARM, Director of Marketing; Crawford E. McInnis, Vice President; Alan E. Berman, Senior Vice President; and Robert B. Berman, CIC, Vice President.

The agency now has more than 30 shareholders. People at all levels can buy stock. “We have CSRs, marketing representatives and producers who are shareholders,” Bruce notes.
Grantland concludes: “We see one of our most important jobs as finding the right place for each person to succeed. We had one staff person here who worked in one division. We talked to her and found out it just wasn’t where she belonged. She’s now one of our best performers in another division.”

The agency also recognizes the need and obligation to give back to the community. It is one of the largest contributors to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and to the Big Oak Ranch in Springville, Alabama, which provides a home for abused, abandoned and neglected children.

“We understand that we aren’t the only people in this business with new ideas,” Bruce acknowledges. “We belong to APPEX (Agency Peak Performance EXchange), a benchmarking group formed by Marsh, Berry and Company, that gives us an opportunity to network with successful agencies from all across the country. We’ve learned a great deal from these agencies. When we started with that group, our Performance Indicator Number was three something out of ten. That really causes you to focus on your operation, because everybody sees your score. This past fall, we won the APPEX Pinnacle Award given for the agency with the highest Performance Indicator Number. We also received another indicator of our success recently—we were selected to become a member of Assurex Global.”

Rough Notes is proud to add one more recognition for Cobbs, Allen & Hall, Incorporated. It is our Marketing Agency of the Month. *