COVER UPDATE: Partnership Power

After three decades of working in the employee benefits field, Skip Kitchner isn't normally at a loss for words when predicting industry trends.

But Kitchner has never faced anything as unpredictable as the federal health care reform bill that was weaving its way through Congress in late November. “One hour it's one thing,” Kitchner says, “the next hour it's something else.”

That unpredictability is one of the main reasons Kitchner, founder and co-owner of Bradenton-based Kitchner & Pierro, sought an unusual partnership in the summer of 2009. That's when Kitchner & Pierro teamed up to form a cross-business partnership with Sarasota-based Al Purmort Insurance, a leading independent property and casualty agency in the Sarasota-Bradenton market.

The partnership between the two firms essentially revolves around each firm pitching the other firm's services to clients. The principles at each firm also formed a separate company to handle and distribute the revenues and commissions generated from new business that stems from the partnership.

While the principles spoke glowingly of the partnership's potential, they also knew it came with inherent risks.

“These things fail all the time,” Al Purmort said in an Oct. 15 Review story, citing potential pitfalls such as an office culture clash, misused resources and poor planning. 

But by the end 2009, Kitchner reported that the partnership was going better than anyone expected. For example, the employees of both firms were clicking together. “The staffs are getting along really well,” Kitchner says. “We've had no issues.”

Another key part of the partnership's early success, Kitchner says, was the staff at Purmort included the arrangement in all of the office's correspondence, with a tagline touting it at the end of e-mails and letters. The three main insurance sales producers at the firm also incorporated the partnership into their standard sales pitches.

Meanwhile, Kitchner and Pierro spent the later summer and early fall meeting with mutual clients of both firms. They spoke with those clients about the partnership and potential gaps in coverage.

Kitchner says the plan for 2010 is to take the partnership a step further, by meeting with a targeted list of at least 10 Al Purmort clients that aren't Kitchner & Pierro customers. The Purmort sales team will also meet with a list of Kitchner & Pierro clients that don't use Purmort for property and casualty insurance services.

— Mark Gordon