Insuring everything from personal wildlife museums to small businesses, Lechner & Stauffer succeeds as a generalist by going against the trend, according to agency principal John Kauffman
IBA: Tell us a little about Lechner & Stauffer. How did it get its start?
John Kauffman: Lechner & Stauffer is a family affair and is in its second generation. Don Lechner is my father-in-law – he started the business in 1956, and I have owned the
agency now for about 12 years.
IBA: What role does specialization play at your agency?
JK: We are definitely against the trends … as an agency, we have been very successful in being a generalist. Today, I can write an injection molding shop, this afternoon I can
be writing a car dealership, and later I can write a shopping center. The nice thing about that is if you wrote only supermarkets, there is always going to be somebody that is better than you. If you write a book of business for supermarkets and somebody comes in with a program and they want to buy that book of business, it makes the agency vulnerable. What we have been able to do as generalists is write all classes of business, in all areas. We are writing from Philadelphia to Allentown, and that spread gives us tremendous security with the accounts that we have.
IBA: What are you focused on for the future?
JK: Well, I don’t think commercial insurance is going to go away at all. The smaller commercial lines accounts – which we call the select business unit or small business unit – those accounts are probably going to go the way of homeowner’s and automobile insurance, that it is just a commodity. But the normal mid-sized commercial lines account,
that person needs an independent agent, that person values an independent agent, and that is where we spend our time. The business has been fabulous for me, and my son just finished his freshman year at Lehigh University. Our goal is to have him take over the family business, and I am pretty confident that is going to happen. I wouldn’t be steering him in that direction if I didn’t think the future was just incredibly bright for the type of business [that we do].
IBA: What has been the agency’s secret to success?
JK: We did something really unique a number of years ago. I gave everyone a two-page list with every value that you can possibly think of. There were several hundred values listed on this sheet of paper – values such as honesty, hard work, family, spirituality and loyalty. One sheet was a page of stickers with the values, and the other page had a very small section on the top for ‘critically important values to you,’ then at the bottom it had ‘values that are not important to you at all,’ and in the middle it had ‘values that are somewhat important to you.’
We had every person in the agency take off the stickers and put them on the sheet according to where they would fit based on their personal values. I made a chart and charted out the common values that everybody had, and there were five values that were common for all of us: spirituality, family, financial security, loyalty and honesty. That has actually made our lives so much easier [in terms of ] running a business. We have a brochure we give to clients, and we will say to those clients, “Here are our values. Markets will change and economies will change, but our values will never change. So if our values don’t align with your values, we shouldn’t do business together. If they do, then you should consider working with Lechner & Stau ffer.” We did that, and that was a tremendous thing for both our clients and our employees.
IBA: What is your advice for brokers who are starting o in the industry?
JK: Education is defi nitely the key to success in our business. The two things you need to do to be successful are education and creating a consistent flow of activity by guarding your pipeline [and] keeping that pipeline full. What I tell my children and each of the young men who work for me is that hard work, honesty, passion and persistence are the keys
to success. You put those things together, whether it is insurance or anything else, and you will be successful.
