Agency Profile: The Cutting Edge

Huff Insurance

Pasadena, Maryland
Founded: 1960
Employees: 9

Huff Insurance doesn’t employ a single dedicated producer, and five of its nine employees are new hires. Yet this small agency serves 1,000 commercial and 2,500 personal lines clients and projects a 2015 gross revenue of $1 million.

How? Owners Nancy and Jerry Nicklow say it’s all in the technology and training.

The firm leverages e-signature software DocuSign, management system Applied TAM 2015, PL Rating and digital marketing platform Agency Revolution, and is launching Applied CSR24 for outsourcing some customer service. In addition to a website with successfully maximized SEO, the agency offers a mobile app for clients and has planned multiple training programs for next year. Buying another agency isn’t out of the question.

Huff has commercial niches in auto dealers, contractors and daycare centers, which bring in a steady stream of leads and referrals. In the coming year, the agency will focus on life-health sales to round out accounts and protect customers.

JERRY NICKLOW, COO & CO-OWNER

We implemented DocuSign to minimize client pain, but it has allowed us to increase our closing ratio by 20% because we are easy to do business with. And our staff saves time because they no longer have to follow a client. They know when the client receives an application, opens it and completes it. We see applications returned within 10 minutes. We get 20% of our apps returned within an hour and 50% returned within 24 hours. We use DocuSign for anything that needs a signature. At first clients were a little afraid, but once they saw how simple it is, they were pleased.

NANCY NICKLOW, PRESIDENT & CO-OWNER

Our SEO work is our No. 1 marketing success. Because SEO is continually changing, we work constantly to stay up to date and develop our online presence. We get four to five leads a day from our website, which means we receive more leads directly into our agency from the Internet than most other agencies that subscribe to lead generators. We are found all over Maryland and our leads are half sold because they are sold on the value of our agency. That’s what allows us to run our agency without producers. All I need are good account managers who can close the business.

KELLY LUTHARDT, PERSONAL LINES ACCOUNT MANAGER

Our No. 2 marketing success is leveraging Agency Revolution for our campaigns to follow up on unconverted leads and lost souls. We used to quote someone and if we didn’t close them, we basically forgot about them, never to remarket to them again. We now have a system to stay in touch with these leads forever. It is not uncommon for us to have an unconverted lead refer someone to us, because our name, rather than their own agency, is top of mind.