Click on an issue to learn just a few of the numerous solutions Forum Members take home.
Producer Management and the Cost of Sales:On average, the cost to hire and develop a producer is $200,000.
An estimated 80% of all producers fail because the right hiring and development procedures are not followed. At $200,000 per failure, how many failures can you afford?
The Forum will show you how you can turn that 80% failure rate into a higher than 80% success rate. This one solution alone is worth the price of the entire Forum.
Additionally, in most agencies, a producer must generate at least $250,000 in commissions just to breakeven. Yet, according to the 2007 GPS Study, the average producer in the average agency only generates $270,000 of commercial and L&H commissions and fees.
If the average is only $270,000, the average agency has at least one if not two, three, or more, producers that are not earning their keep.
Forum Members learn how to ensure their producers earn their keep and make a profit.
Answer this question honestly.
Next, run a book of business report and think about how many unprofitable sales you have made.
Now, re-evaluate your answer.
In 1865, Andrew Carnegie minutely analyzed the cost of making steel enabling him to become one of the richest men in history.
As history shows, knowing your cost of sales is critical to success.
Yet, even the big brokers have not, until recently at least, really examined their cost of sales. If you do not know your true cost of sales, how do you know what is profitable and what is not profitable?
If you are trying to reduce your cost of sales by creating a small commercial department, don't forget to add the cost of future E&O claims because the truth is, based on how most agencies are designing them, the E&O claims will occur.
Instead of shooting from the hip, learn how to determine your cost of sales from the industry experts. Burand & Associates created the first time study of the cost of sales and has conducted at least 300 studies of how much time and money it takes to make a sale.
We'll reveal the time study results, and the secrets to cutting costs and turning those money-losing sales into money-making sales.
This severe soft market is still hanging tough–and it's not close to being over. Agency growth has come to a halt and profits are plummeting.
Agents and brokers everywhere are worried about the effects of the soft market on their businesses…agents and brokers everywhere EXCEPT for Agency Forum Members.
Increasing sales, which is the focus of most programs, is NOT the solution to agency success. If that’s all an agency does, it will not thrive. If that’s all an agency does in this soft market, it may even fail.
If an agency’s profit margin is 15% and prices decrease 20%, how will the agency thrive on sales that cost 5% more than the agency can afford? It won’t.
Cutting expenses is not the total solution either. Agencies that only cut expenses will perish in this soft market.
The solution is not any one thing. It is a combination of more sales, less expense, more productivity, and most of all, OPTIMAL TOTAL MANAGEMENT. Only The Agency Forum provides such a comprehensive program.
Forum Members learn the keys to continually improving profits and growth. Members learn to create an environment in which producers and CSRs build profitable sales. Members learn how to thrive in this soft market–and beyond.
The most effective organizations are those where employees work as a team.The Agency Forum will show you how to foster teamwork and increase effectiveness.
Additionally, most agencies are measuring and managing to the wrong benchmarks.
The Forum will show you:
Until now, agency owners did not have an opportunity to hone their management skills. Until now, agency owners had to pick up management concepts piecemeal or by trial and error.
Forum Members learn to optimally manage all aspects of their operations and as a result, the hours spent managing nagging problems are eliminated and the agency runs more smoothly and more profitably. Wouldn't you prefer to devote your energy to selling rather than dealing with petty personnel issues?
The Forum is about how to manage each aspect of an agency so managers know more, have better data and spend less time on the process.
The Agency Forum is built on a multi-year study by Burand & Associates which revealed that most agencies are chasing the wrong benchmarks–benchmarks that have NOTHING to with increasing profits, growth or agency value!
For example, many agencies manage to Revenue per Producer. Burand’s study determined this statistic has nothing to do with overall profitability! So when it comes time to sell, after spending years and years building their business, agency owners are learning their agencies are not worth what they thought.
Consider the following case study by Chris Burand:
I was working with an agency that was very proud of their high revenue per person benchmark. They were not making any money, but they had a world-class revenue per person number.
Their key to achieving this number was to keep their CSRs’ workloads very high. They were keeping the CSR workloads so high they were totally able to offset their poor producer productivity, but they could not offset all the other poor results. As they pushed hard to maintain high revenue per person, staff morale plummeted, sales declined, and profitability decreased.
The real problem this agency had was they were measuring success using a useless benchmark. Revenue per person does not impact profitability and therefore, by focusing on a bad benchmark, they were ruining their agency.
Too many agencies–even agencies managing to best practices standards–are measuring wrong data, using the wrong benchmarks and not measuring the keys to agency success.
Burand’s breakthrough study DOES uncover the key variables that DO impact profits, growth and value.
Burand’s study is based on the most thorough and complete statistical data ever used in this industry. The study has identified key factors for generating faster growth which most agents have never seen. Isn’t knowing the key to faster growth more important than knowing the average growth rate?
The study reveals information that will transform the way agencies are managed, and Forum Members will gain first-hand access to this information.
More than half of all acquisitions lose money for the buyer, if honest measures are used.
Virtually every study done in the last thirty years has determined this same conclusion. Maybe another 25% breakeven.
Interestingly, most buyers do not know and/or will not admit their acquisitions lose money.
• Do you measure the success of your acquisitions?
• Do you know how to measure the success of your acquisitions?
• Do you know how to improve the success of your acquisitions by using a methodical and knowledgeable approach?
The Forum will show you how.
One cause of failure is buyer’s ego. A number of studies have shown the bigger the buyer’s ego, the more likely their acquisitions will fail. Nothing is wrong with a big ego, but a definite price will be paid when doing acquisitions. How big a price are you willing to pay to enlarge your ego?
The Forum provides the keys you need to evaluate a good acquisition versus a good ego-booster.
Another cause of failure is the lack of due diligence. A famous recent insurance company merger was reportedly completed on a ski slope without either carrier’s merger team being allowed time to do due diligence. The result? The company has been among the slowest growing carriers ever since.
Due diligence is not exciting and it is not the forte' of agency owners. But due diligence has been proven to be a key to successful acquisitions.
The Forum will show you how to complete more successful acquisitions. It will give you a step-by-step process for due diligence so you're not blind-sided by hidden surprises that will quickly siphon away future profits.
Chris Burand recently worked with a leading independent agency whose owners had built an $8 million revenue shop. Its value: $2,000,000!
The four owners had not adequately understood their financials. They thought they did, but they did not. Now, they have nothing to show for 25 years hard work.
Another agency employed a top notch accounting firm that had inadequate insurance knowledge and their recommendations resulted in the agency having a severe tax problem.
These same scenarios have been experienced by hundreds of agencies because the agency owners did not have adequate knowledge of their agency’s financials and neither did their accountants or bookkeepers.
How high a penalty are you willing to pay for inadequate knowledge?
You may be confident you know these things, but so was every single other agency owner that encountered these problems.
The Forum shows agency owners how to understand the key elements of financial statements without forcing them to become experts.
What's so special about another presentation on E&O?
The Forum's E&O session is special because this is the only place you'll get insights and strategies based on dozens of insurance agency E&O reviews and audits.
Chris Burand is one of very few people that has been approved to conduct E&O audits on behalf of the two leading agency E&O carriers.
It is easy to scare the heck out of an audience with E&O stories, but that does not always achieve much.
This session reveals tested solutions that will help you eliminate your E&0 nightmares and help you sleep better at night.
By many estimates, at least 90% of all agency buy-sell agreements are seriously deficient and the penalty for not having a good buy-sell agreement is severe.
Burand & Associates derives a large percentage of its revenues by resolving partnership disputes arising from poor buy-sell agreements. Chris Burand is like a traveling dentist going from town to town extracting cavities.
If you think a cavity is painful, try a partnership dispute!
Maybe you think that because you had a high-priced attorney write your buy-sell, you're okay. Wishful thinking is definitely a common characteristic of agency owners and in this case, it is an unfortunate characteristic.
No attorney can write a proper buy-sell agreement for independent agencies unless he or she understands the unique valuation issues of insurance agencies.
Do you want to tempt fate or do you want to be smart and proactive?
Similarly, most producer contracts are inadequate. But the right contract can attract very high quality producers and keep them.
Agency Forum Members learn which agency contracts they need as well as the critical details required to make those contracts strong.
A huge mistake many agencies make is confusing whether they are a sales-driven agency or a marketing-driven agency.
Sales and marketing both have their advantages and disadvantages, but if an agency owner does not know the difference, and does not know which makes the most sense for his or her agency, the result will be tremendous lost opportunity.
Great marketing-driven agencies are difficult to create, but once created they tend to have very high profit margins and a slow but powerful inertia.
Sales-driven agencies are much easier to create but their profit margins tend to be much thinner.
Not only do you need to know whether marketing or sales fits your agency best, but the benchmarks you use must also match your agency's type.
Consider this example: A great marketing-driven agency saw their growth was far below the best practices standards and on the advice of their consultant made all the changes required to ramp up growth. But, no one told them their profit margins would be seriously damaged by switching gears and unfortunately, they learned the truth too late.
Comparing a marketing-driven agency’s performance to a sales-driven agency’s performance makes no sense.
Forum Members learn to identify the differences between sales- and marketing-driven agencies, which measurements are most appropriate and the keys to successfully managing each type of agency.
The proper combination of technology and procedures can increase profitability 25%.
What other investment can you make to achieve such a return?
On the other hand, the price of poor implementation can be very steep. The Agency Forum shows you how to do it right–the first time.
IT security is another critical issue and just about every agency believes their IT security is good. The reality...in almost 100% of agencies, IT security is abysmal.
Most agency owners have asked their agency IT person if their IT security was good, and guess what they said? “Yes!” What would you expect them to say?
The risk to an agency's reputation and the legal risks of having poor IT security are enormous. In an instant, your agency could be wrapped up in severe financial penalties and even jail.
Just how bad do you want to risk your entire livelihood by not paying attention to IT security?
An agency that has great IT security, usage and procedures can increase sales, reduce risk, and increase profitability all without the agency owner having to do more work.
All it requires is knowledge and The Forum delivers this knowledge.
Good carrier relationships are worth their weight in gold.
Burand & Associates receives countless calls from frantic agency owners exclaiming their surprise that one of their top companies has turned belly-up. These owners feel like they've been blind-sided as they suddenly have to endure the miseries of rolling their very large books.
The alternative to being blind-sided is to have advance knowledge of a carrier's stability. (And, stability is NOT the same as a claims paying rating, i.e. an A.M. Best rating. A high claims paying ratings do not necessarily mean a stable company.)
Burand & Associates' research and analysis over the last 15 years has resulted in a system that accurately predicts companies that are likely to become unstable and even fail.
What is that head start worth to you?
This research accurately predicted the following carriers were prone to death six months to four years before they failed and even before they incurred their first public ratings warnings:
Agents who have truly used this research have doubled their profit margins without working any harder.
Are you ready to learn about a proven formula for staying ahead of the thunderstorms? Then the Forum is the place for you.
Network with executives from the nation's top agencies and brokerages. This is a rare opportunity few agents and brokers ever experience.
Learn how to run your agency more smoothly and profitably. Efficient managers spend fewer hour managing (and more time selling!).
First-hand access to the industry's most comprehensive 15-year benchmarking study.
Experience presentations by the industry's leading experts.
Share ideas freely with exclusive geographic market protection.
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