Producer Development: Combined Agents of America Keeps It In-House

Mark Bridges and Bry Ewan got the idea for creating a producer development program within the Combined Agents of America (CAA) while attending a producer school in Florida.

Bridges explained that during his first year in the insurance business he went to the producer training program in Florida, spending a week there every quarter. It was there that he met Ewan.

“We struck up a friendship. As part of the insurance training school we went to there was some insurance training, some sales training, but a lot of what we did was just exchange some ideas, swap war stories, talk about what was working, what they were doing, what wasn’t working,” Bridges said.

Bridges’ agency, Duncan Fraser Bridges in Amarillo, Texas, and Ewan’s agency, Evans, Ewan & Brady Insurance Agency in Georgetown, Texas, are both members of CAA, a partnership of 44 independent agencies in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

One night over dinner the two hatched the idea of developing a training program just for CAA partners. “We calculated that within the agencies that we had at that time we had somewhere between 50 and 100 agency principals and producers that we could bring together several times a year to do the same thing that we were doing in Florida,” Bridges said.

He said the producers at the Florida school were friendly while there, but hailing from diverse areas around the country they were unlikely to keep in touch. By developing a program within CAA, “not only are we partners when we come to the producer program but we are partners when we walk away,” Bridges said. “So we naturally stay in each others lives.

The first session of the producer development program was in 2005 and the program is still going strong.

“We have a solid group of about 50 agency principals and producers that meet two times a year. I think we’ve probably met 15 times now in the last five to six years,” Bridges said.

Tony McAlister, a producer with BRIA Insurance & Risk Consultants in Austin, Texas, appreciates the benefits the program has provided him. He entered the insurance business while in his late 20s, about five years ago, and found it rough going at first.

“My first year was particularly difficult. I figured I would just walk into it and it would be a piece of cake but I quickly found out that it wasn’t,” McAlister said. “Being a part of CAA and the producer program has been very positive for me in terms of bouncing ideas off of agents that have more experience than I do. … It was always an encouraging thing to realize that other agents were experiencing the same things that I was.”

McAlister said not only was it reassuring to hear that other agents had gone the same kinds of trials that he had, the specific training he’s received has been a “game changer … in terms of building relationships and getting clients, team selling, things like that.”

Don Jones, president of Crockett Insurance Service in Crockett, Texas, and president of CAA, has been in the insurance business for 43 years but still remembers the tough times in the beginning.

“I don’t care how long you’ve been in the business you never forget the difficulties of those first few years and how to survive it,” Jones said. Even so, Jones and other members of the CAA management were skeptical at first of the idea of starting a producer development program.

“A lot of us old hands have been around a long time, spent a lot of money on training sessions, motivation and sales, and not had good results. So we were a little concerned. But we wanted to support these young guys and to see what they could come up with,” Jones said.

“After about a year of this group forming, I attended the first meeting. And I’ve got to tell you when I walked in the room I knew they had something you don’t find in other groups. … And they’re partners — they’re not just people they’re never going to see again. They’re people they’re going to do business with for possibly the rest of their lives. There’s a bond. There’s a trust. There’s just a real desire to help each other succeed.”

On the last day of the twice yearly program, the group has what they call the agency principal panel. It’s “probably the best example of how a mentor/mentee relationship is demonstrated within CAA,” Bridges said.

A rotating panel of four to five agency principals is asked the same questions at each session. Typically, the question run something like: How did you get started in business? Tell us about your agency. What challenges have you faced along the way?

“What’s interesting for us is that for those that are on the front side of their career, as opposed to the back side of their career, is that the same story is pretty much told every time from the perspective of: It was tough for them. Even though life’s good and life’s been good for years, they faced the same challenges that we did, or are still facing today,” Bridges said.

What Didn’t Work

Bridges said not everything has worked as originally planned as the program evolved. For example, the intention at first was that the participants would meet for a week once per quarter. It was difficult to get the whole group together that often for that much time, however, and the low turnouts were disappointing and counter productive. The group now meets twice a year, which has worked out well and attracted bigger groups, Bridges said.

“Another thing we did is we used to pick different venues every time,” he said. “We tried to pick some cool downtown hotel where there were lots of good restaurants, and what we found was when the meeting was over it seemed like everybody just kind of dispersed and when their own way.

The program now meets at a dude ranch, in a secluded location, where the cost of the stay includes hotel rooms, meals and all the dude ranch activities. “What we found is it kept all of us together the whole time, and that made us solidify our relationships even more,” Bridges said.

For more on developing a successful producer development program, listen to a conversation with CAA members at https://www.insurancejournal.tv/videos/3826/. And read more about establishing a successful mentorship program at “Chemistry Crucial When Mentoring an Agent.”

Topics Florida Texas Agencies Training Development