Insurance Marketing and Communications

How to Produce Client Seminars

As we develop our marketing and communications plans for 2005, one of the most effective ways a broker can provide a customized service to its clients is by producing educational seminars on critical insurance issues.

Whether the topic is workers’ compensation, directors and officers’ liability, sexual harassment prevention–or any other of the critical issues facing our client base today, a seminar is something that clients will appreciate and remember. Comprehensive and well organized seminar materials become valued reference guides that your clients can refer to in the future.

Additionally, seminars give your clients a chance to network and develop relationships with each other; and seminars provide a neutral, relaxed forum for brokers to talk with clients face to face, which can help build relationships better than those brief e-mails we send from our Blackberries. But unless you have a dedicated marketing or public relations department, chances are you may feel the burden is too great to place on a staff that is already way too busy, right? Wrong!

Smaller brokers can partner with a carrier, a law firm or a financial institution to help defray costs and share resources when producing a seminar. And an intimate breakfast, or even a 25 person “lunch & learn” seminar can still provide a highly effective educative forum for your clients.

While it may be too daunting to expect to produce a 200 person seminar if you don’t have a dedicated marketing or communications staff, with some simple planning, any brokerage, despite its size, can host a highly effective seminar that clients will remember and appreciate.

Following are five reasons why your organization may want to include seminars in your 2005 calendar:

The soft sell–business development
Obviously, organizations of all types produce seminars to help solidify relationships with existing clients, and to help generate new business. They offer a relaxed forum for information sharing and networking between the hosting company, speakers and the seminar attendees.

Consider your audience, consider your topic and make sure they are a fit. This is one of the most obvious aspects of seminar planning, but amazingly, it can be overlooked, and during planning meetings the seminar’s goals and outline can somehow morph into something different. Stay on track. Poor choices result in low attendance and wasted resources. For example, a seminar on the nuances of the new California Workers’ Comp legislation, while front page news in California, probably isn’t very interesting to your out of state clients. Be democratic and try to select a topic that serves as many of your clients as you can–you’ll get more return on your investment.

The ABCs of educating clients
Since the insurance industry is so intertwined into every aspect of our clients’ business operations, with constantly changing legislation, there is never a shortage of issues that our clients need help understanding.
In California, we are currently undergoing a major change in our workers’ compensation system. Since Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 899 in spring of 2004, clients across the state have had myriad questions on how this reform will play out and affect their day to day business of managing comp claims. To help educate our clients, Heffernan Insurance Brokers brought in an expert speaker, Anthony Hampton, Esq., of the workers’ compensation defense law firm, Finnegan, Marks, Hampton, and Theofel in San Francisco. Because of the impending changes in this legislation, these seminars proved invaluable to our attendees, and attendance numbers broke records for our organization.

Sometimes, during times of critical legal change, educating clients through seminars becomes less of a value-added service, and more of an obligation.

Helping clients network with each other
There’s no doubt about it, our work day schedules are jam-packed. If your clients are kind enough to take valuable time out of their day to attend one of your seminars, do what you can to make it worthwhile and meaningful for them. Give your attendees a little time before or after the seminar to mingle with each other.

Chances are, if they are attending the same seminar, they’ll have something in common. We all know that some of our most trusted advisors and resources are our contacts outside our own companies. If you create an environment where your clients can mix and mingle, down the road, they’ll remember they met at one of your seminars.

We’restrategicpartners! Nowwhat?
Let’s imagine your brokerage or agency has recently forged a strategic partnership with an accounting firm or a law firm. The big-wigs have met and everyone’s agreed to cross-market. You’ve got your slick new brochure co-branded with all of the strategic partners’ logos on it–but how are you actually going to generate any activity?

By developing a joint seminar, you get a chance to actually show your clients and prospects how the strategic partners complement each other, how you work well together, and how you can truly provide an advantage to your clients. With a mixed panel sharing business ideas, live and in person, your clients will better be able to envision how you can work together for them.

Public speaking 101
You’ve got some internal content experts on the hot insurance issue of the day, but they’re scared to death of public speaking. What do you do? Practice, practice, practice.

While public speaking is one of life’s most feared activities, with a little experience, some people actually learn to enjoy it. A seminar is a great forum to give your budding public speakers a place to hone their skills. A confident speaker can handle a full room with podium all to himself, but give newbies a smaller, informal audience, with panel-type setting with two or three speakers seated in chairs at a head table. When in doubt, hold a rehearsal, complete with a tough question and answer session.

The ability to speak confidently in public is a prized possession to those who have it, and giving your staff the chance to learn it is a unique opportunity for any organization. Learning something new on the job outside our normal day-to-day activities can recharge and sometimes eveninspire us.

Ann Mohler is the director of Public Relationsfor the Heffernan Group entities. Mohler started her insurance career at Sedgwick James in San Francisco, and has worked in a marketing and communications capacity in the industry since 1997.

Topics California Legislation Agencies Workers' Compensation