FEATURE sustainable, scalable business model that serves our clients, our team, and our communities long-term.
We are excited to be named a Best Practices Agency and learn from the study to support our vision. We are proud of our team who made this possible. Our team shows up to care for our clients, colleagues, and communities through living the FEE values of integrity, excellence, leadership, and relationship daily. That is what we believe is a Best Practice!"
Bill Rowlen, Flury-Hinderks Insurance Agency: " For our Agency, participating in the Best Practices Study was an important internal validation that we were on the right strategic path. We are so proud of the day to day accomplishments of our team and it was very rewarding to be able to share with our staff how those weekly efforts were validated with the achievement of the Best Practices designation."
Bryan Schmitz, SBS Insurance: " At SBS Insurance, we feel the comparison data that we get back from the Best Practices Study outweigh the time and effort that it takes to complete the study. The ability to judge your agency, to those of similar sizes, helps to identify areas of weakness or at least areas that we have an opportunity to improve.
Once you have completed the data collection and submission process for Best Practices, that portion becomes much less time consuming. The time you spend is an investment in your agencies future."
Bob Wood, Wood Insurance Center: " It’ s something that I’ ve wanted to tackle for quite a while. In 2022 we made a management system switch from Vertafore to Applied Epic. I feel like we now have accurate reporting which made the process much easier. We have a strategic alliance with ICI, and our data is merged with theirs, so the report formats were already complete. The Study takes a little time, but it’ s worth it."
What did you learn from the Best Practices process and / or results that you plan to implement strategically at your agency?
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The ability to judge your agency, to those of similar sizes, helps to identify areas of weakness or at least areas that we have an opportunity to improve."
Wood: " I learned that our agency was performing at an above average level compared to our peers. I don’ t feel that we would implement anything because of the report but seeing it will give us confidence to continue our current practices."
Conrade: " While our ' Rule of 20 ' score is top quartile, we know it alone should not be used as the only measure of our agency’ s health. We have suspected that we have work to do in both the Net Investment in Unvalidated Producer Pay( NUPP) and Weighted Average Shareholder Age( WASA). The study seems to confirm that is the case and we are developing strategies to invest more in producers and increase our ownership base among our high-performing employees. Seeing data that confirms other topperforming agencies are doing these things helps us have confidence that we are doing the right thing by moving in this direction. As they say, ' hope is not a strategy!'"
Davidson: " We continue to increase our niche marketing strategies based on BP survey results. We continue to review our advertising, marketing, and other expenses based on survey results.
We are extremely proud of our staff’ s daily work that
NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2025
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