Form Your Own Panel of Experts

For a low-cost, high-yield way to take stock of your agency’s branding efforts, create your own informal board of advisors. A board not only helps you identify new opportunities, it also keeps you from reinventing the wheel by making needless mistakes because you were too close to your brand to see clearly. Your board is the single best resource to help you quickly come up with fresh ideas for increasing the value of your brand. Here are tips for forming your advisory
board:

1. Identify people you know whose professional skills and reputation you admire. These movers and shakers should be successful people who make things happen. Screen out those who are “merely good” at what they do. To be on your list, they must be great.

2. When your list is complete, choose those who have expertise in different and complimentary areas. Don’t be intimidated at the prospect of asking the best and brightest to participate. If someone turns you down, tell yourself you won’t take it personally and move on to the next prospect.

3. Contact each person, reconnect, remind them how much you respect their expertise and briefly let them know what you’re doing in your job. Then ask if they would be willing to be an informal adviser. Explain exactly what it entails and what’s in it for them.

4. As soon as your board members commit, immediately schedule your first board meeting. If it’s going to be in person, make reservations in a restaurant with a quiet (preferably private) meeting area.

5. Prepare in advance your current one-page branding plan. Include specific ideas, questions, goals and dilemmas you are grappling with. Ask for what you need, but keep it short, focused and succinct. E-mail a copy, along with the meeting details and who will be at the table, to your board members the day before the meeting.

6. Call your meeting to order on time. Go around the table—or around the phone—for brief introductions. Then do a lot of listening and minimal talking. Ask only brief, clarifying questions. Use a tape recorder so you don’t have to try to write everything down.

7. Avoid saying, “Yeah, but…” or giving reasons why something won’t work. Listen, listen, listen. Keep an open mind. Give yourself time to absorb all the ideas that will be flying around the table.

8. Go back to your meeting notes and recording daily. You’ll find little bits of advice that you missed the first time each time you revisit your transcript. Keep a “how are we doing?” journal, jotting down progress, missteps, what’s worked, what hasn’t, what your next course of action is, etc.

9. Report back periodically with succinct e-mail check-ins with your advisory members. Let them know what’s working, and don’t be afraid to ask for very specific, brief additional pieces of advice or referrals. That’s what the best companies do. Follow their lead and, before you know it, you’ll be stunned by the increase in the value of your brand. You’ll be crossing off your biggest goals from your list—and setting your branding bar even higher. And when you do, don’t forget to let your board members know.

Debra Condren, Ph.D., is founder of the Women’s Business Alliance.

Carrier Branding Connection: Ohio Casualty Group

Agents are the face of the independent agency system. That’s why Ohio Casualty Group focuses much of its time and resources on promoting their clients—independent agents.

“We announced a new strategic plan in late November,” President and CEO Dan Carmichael explains, “and our focus is principally on giving our agents better tools to grow profitably—not just with us, but overall.”

The strategic plan also calls for an emphasis within the company to brand its niches, namely bond and construction business.

Carmichael emphasizes the need for branding, especially as the industry enters a soft market in some lines. “If it was just about pricing, we would keep going through the same up and down cycles we’ve always had since I’ve been in the business,” he says. “It’s about aligning the services, making sure that you’re providing that product to the right customer at the right price.”

As a result of its agent outreach efforts, OCG’s company philosophy is especially attuned to agents’ desire for carrier support. “It’s not just about trying to get Ohio Casualty on the park bench in their town. We could care less about where our logo is, it’s more about getting their name out and also getting them tools. The whole focus is being able to help an agent grow their business.”

On that note, OCG has embraced the Trusted Choice® brand and encourages agents to utilize it to grow their business. In fact, the company does not do any print advertising promoting itself; instead, its ads tout Trusted Choice®. In addition, OCG also participates in co-op advertising with its individual agents.

“We’re not interested in a big brand campaign for Ohio Casualty,” Carmichael says. “We’re more interested in branding particular products and then linking them to the Trusted Choice® agents.”

—Jennifer Sikorski