Relative and Absolute Success

Family Follows Sinclair ‘No-Quote’ Strategy

David Sinclair, founder and president of Sinclair Insurance Group, Inc., is entering a new phase in his business life, relatively speaking.

Sinclair has built three agencies over his 30-year insurance career (see related story page N12) and the latest one in Wallingford, Conn. is going gangbusters. The full-service agency has risk management, employee benefits, surety, loss control, claims adjusting, human resources and even pension expertise on staff to cater to commercial clients and an exciting “virtual” agent experiment taking shape on the personal lines side. It writes close to $100 million in personal and commercial lines premiums and even more in benefits.

Sinclair has grown this agency in part through acquisitions; in fact he has bought 21 agencies in the past 10 years It was not until asked for this story on family agencies that Sinclair realized that all but a handful of the 21 acquisitions he has made were of family-run agencies and many of the family members are still active in the businesses.

Turned down offer
Others in 58-year old Sinclair’s position who have been through the ups-and-downs of insurance that he has might decide that now is a good time to cash in. But that’s not going to happen, according to the Connecticut entrepreneur, who said he recently turned down “a ridiculously, ridiculously high offer” for his agency.

“I have no intention of retiring,” he told Insurance Journal.

Sinclair has plenty of business reasons but there are three personal reasons in particular to stick around. Two sons-in-law named Matt and his daughter, Allison, are now selling for the firm, so Sinclair isn’t going anywhere.

Daughter Allison has been in commercial lines sales for about a year and a half. Her husband, Matt Bauer, started in the agency’s group sales division about one year ago. He worked in telecommunications sales prior to joining the family business.

Matt Roberts, who is married to Sinclair’s other daughter, is a West Point graduate who had training in pharmaceutical and life insurances sales before getting involved in property casualty account selling at Sinclair. “If you can sell life insurance, you can sell anything,” Sinclair said.

Sinclair had no expectations of family involvement in the business nor did he pressure anyone. “They came to me,” he said.

He thinks it is important for all employees, family or otherwise, to prove themselves. “Sometimes owners don’t evaluate their kids. That’s bad for everybody, the kids and the business,” he said. Or owners put family in positions where they don’t contribute.

That’s not the way things have gone in Wallingford. All three of his family members are in sales, where they can’t hide; they must produce.

Thus far, it’s working. “We are growing significantly,” he claims.

Sinclair knows a little something about sales. In his first of three insurance ventures he was a Nationwide agent; in fact, he was one of the insurer’s most successful agents until the company decided to exit the commercial lines business, which was his strength.

“You really have to think outside of the box. How many Nationwide agents were writing fortune 500 accounts? I had three of them.”

That kind of thinking explains why the sales for Allison and the Matts and all account executives at Sinclair are handled differently than at many property casualty agencies. His sales force sells the agency, not price.

“Our whole approach to the business is that we ‘re not going to quote on it. We tell you what we’re going to do and you stack us up against the company you’ve got now and see who’s better. We’re closing about 90 percent,” Sinclair maintained.

He means it when he says his agency provides service. “We’ll move them to another company if it’s a better company than the one they have but many of the accounts we take over are broker of record accounts. They have the right insurance; they just don’t have the right agent. We let the client come to that conclusion and take it over.”

This sales strategy has its risks — “Sometimes we don’t get them the first time, although rarely,” he admitted — but it pays off in the long run.

No bid contractors
A significant 35 percent of Sinclair’s commercial business is with contractors. “They’re used to bidding. So when you tell them you’re not bidding they look at you like, ‘What do you mean?’ Now a lot of these guys that we’ve had for three or four years don’t get other bids at all. They might go out for bid the second year because that’s what they’re used to but after that they don’t do it at all. They trust us.”

With the commercial lines operation humming along, and family contributing, Sinclair is trying something new on the personal lines side. He is training and equipping an army of “virtual” agents, beginning in Florida (where he has a second home). These employees sell personal lines and small commercial policies using only a laptop and without an office.

“Their only function is selling,” Sinclair explained. He has trained five recruits in this new approach in the past year and each is averaging $6,000 in commission month.

Sinclair himself expects to be working more from Florida, linked electronically, in the coming years.

“It’s not a bad thing to build up the business for the grandkids,” he said.