Agency Profile: Lead with Bobbleheads

G&N Insurance

Southborough and South Boston, Massachusetts
Founded: 2010
Employees: 26

Smart rookies Matt Naimoli and Zack Gould had spent less than four years working for a direct writer right out of college when they launched G&N with no clients, no employees, one carrier and a shoebox for an office.

Fast forward five years: G&N insurance writes for nearly every property-casualty carrier in Massachusetts, boasts more than 6,000 clients and has carved out a niche that enabled the young agency to earn gross revenue of $1.9 million in 2015—all thanks to warm personal lines referrals. With four outside and four inside producers and a revenue mix of 75% personal p-c and 25% commercial p-c, the agency projects $2.4 million income in 2016.

During the prospecting, renewal and claims processes, the G&N team proactively researches each account fully and delivers in-depth, custom recommendations by phone call or email—unprovoked by clients.

MATT NAIMOLI, PARTNER

Our specialty is catering to real estate market professionals as the go-to solution center for buyers in need of insurance before they close on their new property. We drive business through quality introductions to home buyers from loan officers, realtors and attorneys. This approach allows us to maximize the number of policies per client to increase our closing ratio and retention, decrease our loss ratio and change the sales process to present solutions rather than compete solely on price and convenience. Our reputation and focus in this market helps us develop relationships with hundreds of real estate professionals throughout New England.

We believe we have only just begun to capitalize on the organic opportunities for growth within our state and region. Increasing the number of relationships we have that can drive more business to the firm while strengthening and expanding our internal departments will allow for much faster growth. Although acquisitions aren’t off the table, we want to see how fast and how large we can grow G&N organically before taking our focus off of what we do best. We recently launched an interactive website for our centers of influence and prospective clients, in addition to using social media and other non-traditional digital methods to drive interest to our agency.

ZACK GOULD, PARTNER

Company culture is paramount to our success. We evaluate employees on 50% attitude and 50% performance and make sure we balance hard work with having fun. The best ideas come directly from our team, particularly during weekly meetings, “Champagne Friday” celebrations and quarterly team-building outings. To celebrate our first year in business, our wives gave us bobbleheads of ourselves. This inspired the G&N bobblehead campaign for employees and referral partners. Employees receive custom bobbleheads on their one-year work anniversaries. We’ve given more than 250 custom bobbleheads to top-producing loan officers, realtors and attorneys throughout the state.

The bobblehead campaign has been our most successful marketing activity. The bobbleheads have opened doors and provided opportunities for relationship building, cementing our agency as the leader in our niche in Massachusetts.

At G&N, we allow ourselves to take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed, and we count on each other to do high-quality work on time. We are a proactive customer services-oriented team in every sense of the word. Our sales team members are exceptional outbound marketers. The operations team triple checks for a smooth on-boarding process, and the service team provides daily claims updates to our clients. Our renewal team researches and communicates updates and policy options to clients annually. And our business development department attempts to connect clients with valuable complementary industry professionals.

HEATHER ZAWATSKI, AGENCY MANAGER

We think many agencies believe the only way to grow is through acquisition or by bringing on large commercial accounts. However, by specializing in homeowners insurance and catering to home buyers during the home-buying process, we have become leaders and experts in an underserved real estate industry. Between 40 and 50 introductions a week fuel our organic expansion to roughly $100,000 in new business premium weekly. Our customer retention is strong because the foundation of our mission statement is to proactively engage with our clients. In an industry known for being reactive, our clients appreciate our unique referral, renewal and claims departments.

We hire only proven sales producers who know how to create their own relationships and cultivate organic referrals at 200-300% above the industry average. We support them by offering aggressive compensation plans and ongoing processing and marketing support. The biggest challenge for most producers is to focus primarily on sales and marketing and eliminate all other non-premium-generating activities. To help our producers do that, we “over hire” internally for our operations, service and renewal teams, so our producers can spend their time networking, marketing and selling.