Expert ideas and know-how for your audience...

Successful agency management begins right here! Participants get a first-hand look into the building blocks of a strong agency. Topics include:

• Agency Financial Management
• Carrier management
• Strategic Agency Management
• Leadership
• Producer Management
• Operations Management
• Marketing & Sales

The simple fact is: all agencies will change ownership. Therefore, all agencies need a perpetuation plan and a perpetuation plan can take up to five years to implement.

Planning for perpetuation can be one of the most difficult and emotional decisions agency owners must make. By avoiding the inevitable though, they risk losing their agency and their financial security for their family and their retirement.

This seminar helps agency owners sort through their goals and covers the intricate details of preparing for perpetuation, including:

• Addressing post-retirement goals and needs
• Getting assistance
• Deciding who to sell to: an insider or an outsider
• Preparing the buyer
• Preparing the agency for sale
• Phasing out responsibilities
• Improving profitability
• Sharpening procedures
• Getting company relations in order
• Shaping-up financials
• Auditing liabilities
• Determining agency value
• Completing the sale

Audience members learn to prepare today for their agency’s and their family’s secure future.

A simple fact of life for independent insurance agencies is agencies depend on insurance companies. With thousands of companies setting prices, cutting commissions, merging, and constantly changing, agents need to understand the facts and trends that shape the industry in which they must grow and prosper. This presentation helps agents learn facts about the state of their industry, how they are effected, and what they can do to build stronger company relationships.

Agents that understand the state of the industry, and know which companies have the greatest market share and can run the highest loss ratios, are able to make better, more informed decisions. Better decisions lead to larger profits, greater prosperity, and much less frustration!

The future can truly be bright for independent insurance agencies. Agencies that achieve large books of business (at least $500,000 written premium) with at least three major carriers can realize:

• 20% profit margins
• 15% growth
• Bigger contingencies
• Fewer company problems
• Increased agency value
• And More!

Many agency owners and managers only dream about such a rosy outlook. This presentation provides the keys to making these dreams reality. These key topics include:

• Account development
• Involving all employees in sales
• Improving producer productivity
• Companies and company contracts
• Clusters & acquisitions

Audience members walk away with a clear picture of what it will take to pave their way to greater profits and a prosperous future!

The future can truly be bright for independent insurance agencies. Agencies that achieve large books of business (at least $500,000 written premium) with at least three major carriers can realize:

• 20% profit margins
• 15% growth
• Bigger contingencies
• Fewer company problems
• Increased agency value
• And More!

Many agency owners and managers only dream about such a rosy outlook. This presentation provides the keys to making these dreams reality. These key topics include:

• Account development
• Involving all employees in sales
• Improving producer productivity
• Companies and company contracts
• Clusters & acquisitions

Audience members walk away with a clear picture of what it will take to pave their way to greater profits and a prosperous future!

Organic Growth or Acquisitions?

Many agencies struggle with which of these two paths is the best. This presentation compares these two alternative strategies, including a discussion of the financial, management and cultural issues that determine success for both.

Many myths pervade our industry and too often result in bad decisions, sending agencies racing down the wrong roads while their competitors make the right choices. Why chase a myth? Class members will learn the truth behind these myths and learn how to avoid these common pitfalls.

While consulting with insurance agencies throughout the years, I have notice a few common themes that frequently plague the welfare of agencies. These are very often small issues, usually unnoticed by the agency, that can turn into huge problems. This seminar helps agents identify similar issues in their own agencies and offers suggestions to get the agency back on track before the problem explodes.

Some of the "Lessons Learned" include:

• Accounting Issues
• Spending/Capital Appreciation
• Partner Issues
• Staff Compensation
• Leadership
• Tax Issues
• Issues with Associated Corporations

Before a problem can be solved, it must be identified. This seminar shines a light on issues that most often go undetected until it is too late.

Agency managers must deal with a myriad of contracts, but those contracts are often riddled with common problems. This class will cover the common problems found in many buy/sell contracts and discuss how to improve them.

Amidst the frenzy of mergers and acquisitions, and with the push agencies are feeling to grow quickly, many agency owners are facing the daunting task of buying other agencies. How do you know how much to pay? How do you know if the deal makes sense for your agency? How do you structure the deal? This presentation answers these questions and more, in detail. Audience members will learn:

• Every agency is unique. Therefore, a buyer’s valuation and a Fair Market Valuation are different. Every agency is worth more, or less, to a specific buyer, which means a buyer specific appraisal is critical to a successful acquisition.  In fact, studies show that as many as 90% of all agency acquisitions have a negative return on investment. Our experience suggests that one reason many of these acquisitions lost money was because they did not use a buyer specific appraisal.

• The ingredients of an accurate valuation and what a buyer must consider when looking at an agency.

• How to structure the deal. While most acquisitions lose money, buyers can often pay a high price and still make money if they structure the deal differently.

• How to structure deals correctly so that buyers and sellers both make more money.

Agencies are usually the most valuable asset agency principals will ever own. Many owners work their entire lives to build their agency’s value and then depend on the revenues from their agency’s sale for retirement. Therefore, maximizing the agency’s value and structuring the sale correctly are absolutely critical. This presentation covers these items in detail. Audience members will learn about:

• Establishing agency value: Often, agency values are determined by using an average multiple. Every agency is unique, therefore using an average usually is grossly inaccurate. Chris covers the ingredients of an accurate valuation.

• Value for a buyer: Every agency is unique. Therefore, every agency is worth more, or less, to a specific buyer, which means a buyer specific appraisal is critical to a successful acquisition. Chris discusses how a buyer’s valuation and a Fair Market Valuation are different and what a buyer must consider when looking at an agency.

• Structuring the sale: While most acquisitions lose money, buyers can often pay a high price and still make money if they structure the deal differently. Participants learn how to structure deals correctly so that buyers and sellers both make more money.

• Maximizing agency value: Because most sellers will not be selling their agencies for a few months or years, they have time to increase their agency’s value. Audience members learn the keys to increasing agency value.

While not all agencies will consider clusters, understanding them is very important because they can present competitive pressure. And, for those that might consider a cluster or have joined a cluster, this class will cover the critical considerations, including a discussion about why most cluster contracts are nothing more than time bombs and how to improve them. Participants will also learn alternatives to joining a cluster.

"What should producers be paid?" The answer is easy: "Less than the revenues they generate." They should also be paid less than their share of the agency’s fixed and variable expenses. Paying them a greater amount costs the agency more than it makes on every sale and according to the Academy of Producers Studies (the organization that provides CIC seminars), most producers are overpaid.

Every agency has different cost structures, goals, and ways of doing business. Since each agency is unique, their compensation program must also be unique. A custom compensation system made to fit each individual agency will decrease expenses, increase compensation, and magnify profits for the owners. This presentation helps agencies achieve these goals by showing what they should pay their producers and how to restructure compensation to increase profits. Audience members will learn how to pay their good salespeople even more while simultaneously increasing profits!

This presentation will also cover:

• Innovative compensation plans
• Vesting plans
• Deferred compensation plans
• Benchmarks for producer productivity

Is your agency spending more than it makes on every sale? Most agencies are without even knowing it! According to the most recent APRS data, the average agency spends as much as $1.11 for every commission dollar earned. These unprofitable sales are often hidden by profitable house accounts, contingencies, and other revenue sources. Wouldn’t it be better to make a profit on each sale in the first place? Imagine how the agency’s profits and value would skyrocket!

This seminar will include the following topics:

• Every agency is unique: The cost of a sale is determined by the agency’s cost structure and methods of doing business, therefore costs are different for every agency and every line of business
• Allocated overhead
• Common sources of costs and ways to pinpoints and decrease costs
• Minimum hit ratios and minimum commissions
• Producer compensation: Improve profits and productivity, while enabling good producers to increase their take-home pay

Audience members will learn how to lead their agency down the road to greater profits by making profitable sales. They will learn how to identify costs and how to magnify their profits!

I recently surveyed a group of top performing agency owners regarding producer compensation. The question was, "Should producers be compensated for all sales?"

The unanimous answer was "No." These owners know that some of their sales are not profitable. Some sales cost the agency more than it makes. The follow-up question was, "How many of you compensate your producers for all sales?" About 80% raised their hands.

Whether it's culture, tradition, habit or a perceived necessity, if an agency owner knows they should stop paying producers for all sales, especially unprofitable sales, the agency needs to find a way to achieve that beneficial goal. But how does an owner say to a producer, "I'm cutting your paycheck, but I hope you remain a happy, content, hard-working employee?"

This is never an easy situation. So to help owners clear this significant hurdle, Chris outlines a step-by step solution during this seminar. Topics covered include:

• Ways to identify unprofitable sales
• Suggestions for gaining producer buy-in
• How to cost an account
• Methods for determining minimum account size
• Alternate compensation methods
•Setting up support producer (or "farmer" producers) or a small business unit

The vast majority of agency owners pay producers to make unprofitable sales. It is a significant hurdle, though, for most agency owners to put an end to this unprofitable practice. This seminar offers a plan to help.

Enhanced producer management enables agencies to greatly increase sales, reduce costs, increase morale, and reduce management frustration. This class covers the keys every agency needs to achieve the equivalent of insurance agency bliss.

Increasing sales is an obviously common topic in the insurance world but for all the emphasis placed on sales, the industry success rate is marginal for a variety of reasons. First, the focus is too often on any sale, not profitable sales. Second, most of the time, insurance consumers follow Newton's First Law of Motion: objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless an outside force acts upon them. Most customers are reluctant to leave unless they have a serious problem or they can get a significantly lower price.

Few producers truly work the former in a positive context, so the result is unprofitable sales and a price driven relationship. Third, too often agencies follow a "Field of Dreams" attitude, "If we build an agency or hire a producer, the customers will come." This, however, is the insurance industry. Not Hollywood.

The key to increasing profitable sales is to manage the sales process very intensely, something very few agencies, even large ones, do well. This class will cover managing the sales process in addition to increasing sales because it is truly pointless to do one without the other. Class members will learn the whole picture, enabling them to lead their agencies down the road to much greater success.

E&O loss exposure is a major concern for most agencies, and rightfully so. Many steps can be taken though to greatly reduce an agency's risk of an E&O loss. In the case of E&O, prevention really is the best medicine. This seminar focuses on the many preventative steps agencies can take to reduce their E&O risk.

A few of the topics covered include:

• Procedures
• Account Reviews
• Coverage Checklists
• Renewals
• Cancellations
• E&S Markets
• Agency Infrastructure
• Insurer Insolvency
• Training
• Fraud
• Record Retention
• Privacy

Attendees of this seminar get an added bonus: each of the suggestions discussed in this seminar not only help reduce E&O exposures but they also help greatly improve the agency's overall operation!

Independent insurance agencies' future competitors will sell insurance as a loss leader. Their prices will be lower than the average insurance agencies’ prices. What must agencies do to sell insurance at prices higher than the competition? Agencies MUST offer better products and better services. Offering good, or even great service, is useless because that is every agencies’ claim to fame.

Quality and competitive advantages are the keys to providing better products and services. Quality and competitive advantages also lead to increased sales and profit margins because new sales are easier to make, retention is higher, and the agency operates more efficiently.

This presentation focuses on helping agencies develop their own unique quality programs and includes discussions on:

• Account development
• Evaluating the quality of an agency’s current services
• The specific aspects of quality that can be used to improve products and services, decrease E&O exposures, and develop competitive advantages
• The advantages most important to agencies–and clients–and how to create those advantages
• The importance and different purposes of customer surveys
• Decreasing costs and pricing

Quality is essential in today’s highly competitive insurance market and even more important in tomorrow’s market as more diverse forms of competition fight for your customers. This presentation provides the information and methods agencies need to develop a quality program that will propel them ahead of the competition and increase profits!

Contingency contracts vary tremendously in quality, how much they pay, and the type of business they reward. Every agency has the opportunity to increase profits by $5,000 to $500,000 without making more sales. The keys are to increase contingency income by placing business strategically and/or negotiating additional income. In this seminar, the audience learns how to use these keys to increase their compensation by tens of thousands of dollars in pure profit!

As the industry expert on contingency contracts, Chris discusses the following:

• How and what to negotiate to gain additional compensation
• Negotiating tips and techniques
• Critical aspects to look for in a contract, such as: reserve takedowns, expense loads, and performance thresholds
• How to identify common errors
• Contract provisions that benefit, and others that detriment, an agency

As companies demand more and more premium volume, agencies are having greater difficulty obtaining and keeping carriers. Because of this, Chris can expand this presentation to include:

• Obtaining company contracts
• Seven evaluation categories for choosing the best companies
• Costs of rolling books of business
• Costs and benefits of doing business with fewer companies

Participants walk away from this eye-opening presentation with the information they need to build stronger, more secure relationships with their companies and increase their pure profit by working smarter, not harder.

Without insurance companies, what would agencies have to sell? Nothing! Obviously, then, effectively managing carrier relationships is essential. Additionally, managing them well can greatly improve an agency's operations and profitability.

This seminar takes audience members through an in-depth look at the many aspects of carrier relationships and offers a long list of suggestions improving carrier relations. A few of the topics covered include:

• Carrier Stability, including:

• Warning signs of instability
• Differences between claims paying ratings and insurer stability
• How stability effects behavior

• Agent's obligations to their clients

• State of the Industry

• Evaluating carriers

• Getting companies to pay more

• Knowing your contingency contracts

• How automation and technology effect carrier relations

Improved carrier relations result in many benefits. Companies get first shot at new business, less competition, and increased profits. Agencies get better underwriting, greater productivity, lower E&O exposure, increased profits, and fewer book rolls!

Agencies have a great opportunity to increase their profitability and improve their operations by working with fewer carriers. However, when an agency trims down their number of carriers, they must choose those carriers carefully and build strong relationships with those that remain.

This seminar discusses the benefits of working with fewer carriers and covers the many factors that must be considered when carefully selecting carriers. Such factors include, carrier stability, carrier ratings, carrier operational performance, and the agency's performance with each carrier. Audience members also learn the keys to building strong carrier relationships and tips for getting companies to pay more.

The bottom line is a long list of benefits for companies (less competition, first shot at new business, increased profits…) and a long list of benefits for agencies (better underwriting, greater productivity, lower E&O exposure, increased profits, and more)!

Smart financial management magnifies an agency’s profits and value. Profit margins can be increased by 20% or more! On the other hand, poor financial management can bankrupt an agency, cause it to be out of trust, and significantly decrease its value.

Most agency principals are salespeople, not financial wizards. However, because financial management is critical to an agency’s future, this seminar provides practical information principals can immediately use to improve their financial management skills. The following key issues are covered:

• Agency value: Learn the keys to increasing agency value.
• Cost of sales and increasing profits on each sale: The average agency spends more than it makes in commissions. Learn how to avoid this trap!
• Financial ratios: What they mean and why they are important.
• Avoid being penny wise and pound foolish: Chris includes a discussion on compensation and advertising which are two categories where many agencies can make great gains.

In short, financial management can make or break an agency. This seminar provides the information agency principals need to provide sound financial management for their agency’s future success!

For independent insurance agencies, capital planning boils down to one thing: having adequate working capital. Agents attending this seminar learn the importance of working capital, from being in trust to improving agency value.

This seminar also covers:

• How to calculate working capital
• Reasons an agency may need additional working capital
• The importance of being in trust
• Special considerations for mergers & acquisitions
• The advantages of having adequate working capital