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Analysis of Agencies with Revenues
Greater Than $10,000,000
“Every time we lose a piece of business we
catalog who beat us. If a particular
producer is beating us consistently, I set
out to eventually hire him or her. The first
step is to let them know that if their
situation ever changes, we would be
interested in having them join our team.”
internal procedures and training on skills including automation, time
management, communications, etc. Many of these firms invest a lot
of effort in annual performance reviews, which are considered to be
a key part of the training and development process.
Consistently, these firms want to be known as the employer of
choice. Frequently, this includes a commitment to have pay levels
that are equal to or better than peers and competitors. Many of
these firms also attempt to recognize and reward performance in a
variety of other ways. Finally, most of these firms are regularly
measuring their performance as it relates to their employees. This
includes not only productivity measurements, but also levels of
turnover and responses to employee surveys.
C
OMMUNICATIONS
–
E
MPLOYEE
, C
LIENT
,
AND
C
ARRIER
Even for some of the best firms in the country, communications
continue to be a big and ongoing challenge. A number of these
organizations have felt that it is important to have open
communication with their employees and, as such, have given the
employees broad access to information. This begins with an
understanding of the firm’s mission and specific business plans and
also includes a regular review of how the firm is performing against
those business plans. Communications with employees are
facilitated through a variety of means including monthly newsletters,
employee meetings that are held several times per year, and
through the use of the Intranet.
“It’s vitally important that we keep our
employees informed so that they have
adequate information with which to do
their job, but also so that they can
understand that they are an important
part of the organization.”
“For this segment of clients we agree on a
written ‘Stewardship Plan’ that details
what we will do, when it will be done, and
who is accountable. This becomes the
basis for periodic meetings with the client.
They understand the quality of the job
that we’re doing for them and helps to
insolate us against competition.”
“One of the greatest competitive
advantages we can have results from the
quality of the relationship we have with
our insurance carriers. The quality of
that relationship is directly dependent
upon the quality of our communications
with them.”
Client communications are considered to be extremely important as
well. A variety of means are used to communicate with clients with
many of these firms reporting a heightened use of the internet.
Typically, many of these firms will tailor the level of service and the
basis of communication dependent upon the size and importance of
the customers. For the larger and more important customers, a
number of these firms have established stewardship programs
where they will meet periodically with the client to review the firm’s
performance against the commitments that have been made as well
as using this opportunity to get input from the customer and to build
relationships.
Carrier communications are handled in a variety of ways. One of
the more creative approaches was an annual meeting for all the
agency’s carriers where the firm’s annual business plan was rolled
out and the carriers invited to let the agency know how they could
help in accomplishing the objectives. This has proven to be an
effective way to communicate with the carriers, but also an effective
way to shift the dialogue to what the carriers are willing to commit to
do for the agency.
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