Agency Profile: Golden Triad

Herlong Bates Burnett Insurance, Inc.

Greenville, South Carolina
Founded: 2002
Employees: 15

Meticulous dedication to industry education, community entrenchment and state-of-the-art technology secures success for Herlong Bates Burnett Insurance, Inc., a Best Practices agency. In 2014, seven producers generated gross income of $1.4 million. About 725 commercial lines account for 75% of revenue, and 900 personal lines account for 17%; at 8%, life-health accounts round out the mix.

JOHN BURNETT, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT

Our most successful prospecting activities are networking groups such as Business Networking International (BNI) and community involvement. The BNI environment allows our producers to build relationships with local business owners that almost always lead to new business or new business referrals from people we trust. Our producers and staff members are deeply involved in the community’s Sertoma Club, Rotary clubs, churches, schools, cancer organizations and charities. Their aptitude for always wanting to go above and beyond in their volunteer work helps to spread our agency name and reputation for customer service. And that promotes new relationships every day.

We are a generalist agency with the resources to laser in on any specific industry and any client’s needs—which makes every specialty business equally important to our success as an agency. What sets us apart from competitors is our knowledge, education and availability for service. With more than 80 years of combined experience, our staff prides itself on the wide array of combined insurance knowledge and expertise we can offer our clients.

MICHAEL HERLONG, PRESIDENT

We are big advocates of education and encourage all our employees to acquire designations. We offer our producers access to all the educational tools they would need to obtain licenses and excel in our industry. Once licensed, our producers attend the State Auto PaceSetter program, where they learn selling techniques and receive weekly coaching, sales goals and objectives that are spread throughout the first year to help them maintain a steady flow of new business. We also fund their memberships in networking groups to help procure lasting business relationships.

We are a Trusted Choice® agency and are therefore committed to quality service. We all work together as a team, so leads are shared amongst producers. And our producers know they can depend on our account managers to help retain existing business, so they focus on new opportunities.

TOM BATES, VICE PRESIDENT/COO

In the past, we sought seasoned individuals with industry knowledge and experience—great qualities to have. But that was our biggest mistake. Now, we look for individuals who are inexperienced in insurance but customer service-driven and eager to please with strong education backgrounds—ensuring an ability to learn and adapt. We will continue to grow with our clients and hire individuals as needed who will help preserve our great relationships with our clients. We will also stay open-minded to any opportunities that arise. Our next big investment will be to move out of the space we currently lease into a standalone office.

Technology enables our top-notch staff to focus on sales. From Applied Systems, we use Epic and have branded Applied CSR24 to “HBB 24.” We use Zywave’s Broker Briefcase and ModMaster for marketing materials, drip campaigns, and client experience analysis. Producers also use the Salesforce CRM application.