Get Happy

REVIEW SUMMARY
Business. Gould & Lamb, Bradenton
Industry. Insurance
Key. Gould & Lamb, under a new president and chief operating officer, launched a branding and marketing campaign.

Deborah Pfeifle's promotion to the top job at a 300-employee niche health insurance firm in Bradenton came at difficult time last summer.

The Boston-based private equity firm that owns the company, Gould & Lamb, had just let go of John Williams, the company's longtime president. Williams' mom and stepdad, Janice and Mike Gould, co-founded the company in 1999.

Then, in Pfeifle's first week on the job in July, executives from Lloyd's of London were in Bradenton to meet with Gould & Lamb's top managers. Lloyd's, a global business insurance icon, was considering hiring Gould & Lamb for Medicare compliance services.

Pfeifle was peppered with questions. “They are very particular about their partnerships,” says Pfeifle, pronounced Fif-lee. “Their due diligence process was very stringent.”

Gould & Lamb won the Lloyd's account, a twofold victory. It also gave Pfeifle a chip in the transition process to reassure clients, employees and vendors that Gould & Lamb will still be an industry leader without Williams.

The transition includes a branding and marketing campaign, down to a new logo and colors. It also includes new products and services, an investment in technology and some additional employees.

Pfeifle adds that Gould & Lamb, with a headquarters on Riverfront Boulevard in downtown Bradenton, will make a concerted effort to become more known in the local community. That facet of the firm was largely neglected the last decade.

“It's very exciting,” says Pfeifle. “We are going to put out there that the company is about a lot of energy.”

The Williams tenure was a paradox for Gould & Lamb. A winner of the Business Review's Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Sarasota-Bradenton in 2006, Williams is something of a pioneer in the Medicare Set Aside industry. Medicare Set Aside firms — there is only a handful nationwide — project lifetime medical costs on a Medicare insurance claim.

Gould & Lamb under Williams quickly became a Walmart in a sea of mom-and-pops.

Revenues grew every year since 2001, back when it had just $250,000 in sales and four employees. With 26-year-old Williams at the helm, Gould & Lamb surpassed $2 million in sales in 2002 and by 2009 it was at $41.8 million. Pfeifle declined to release 2010 revenues for the company, which now has employees in 38 states.

Yet Williams had a reputation both inside the company and in the small industry as erratic and difficult. Ryan Roth, president of Columbia, Md.-based MedVal, a Gould & Lamb competitor with $7 million in annual sales, says it was a poorly kept secret that Williams' presence stunted Gould & Lamb's growth.

“I don't think anyone in the industry thought it was a bad idea that John was let go,” Roth says. “John's departure was long overdue. They definitely needed to make a change.”

Williams couldn't be reached for comment. Rob MacInnis, a partner with ABRY Partners, the Boston firm with majority ownership of Gould & Lamb, didn't return numerous requests for comment.

Pfeifle says Williams' exit was collegial and smooth, although the decision to make a change was clear.

“The leadership style wasn't conducive to staff retention and recruiting talent,” says Pfeifle. “The style was affecting our sales division.”

Collaborative approach

The sales division has gone through more changes, part of the company's rebranding in the post-Williams era. Two sales executives left the firm with Williams and replacements have already been named.

Pfeifle also created a corporate account management department, an arm of the sales department that's a concierge for big clients. That unit is made up of five employees.

“We want to have a change in the culture,” says Pfeifle. “We want to create an environment where people want to come to work and are happy to be here.”

More happy: Pfeifle brought in some Disney managers to speak with Gould & Lamb executives on how to deliver top-notch customer service.

Pfeifle says her management style is collaborative. She's a disciple of Jim Collins' Good to Great theory. “My philosophy,” says Pfeifle, “is you have to have the right people and let them do their job.”

Pfeifle even made some cosmetic changes over the past nine months, in addition to the new sales department and marketing campaign.

For example, her office is cheery, with cushy seats and soft colors. A large framed picture of Pfeifle's college-age daughter stands next to her computer. In contrast, when Williams occupied the same space, the office was more barren, with a near-empty desktop and dark colors.

A Maryland native, Pfeifle was a registered nurse for 12 years in Orlando before she got into health insurance in 1995. She then held jobs with big firms, including Humana and The Hartford. Pfeifle's role with those firms was to evaluate complex cases — methodical, detail-oriented work that brought out her analytical side.

Pfeifle met Williams in 2003, when she worked for a group benefits division of The Hartford that used Gould & Lamb for some services. Gould & Lamb hired Pfeifle in 2006. The firm promoted Pfeifle three times before it named her president and chief operating officer in July.

“I'm from the industry,” says Pfeifle. “I know what it's like to be on the other side as a customer. Having that knowledge is very valuable in this seat.”

Fortuitous timing

That knowledge is why Pfeifle made customer service an unbending priority — not mere platitudes. She's delivered that message to several department heads and many employees.

“Every change that's been made, you have to ask yourself how it benefits the customer,” says Pfeifle. “If it doesn't benefit the customer, we need to look at other options. That's been a change in focus.”

In the early days of Gould & Lamb, the focus was to survive. In fact, the Goulds launched the firm out of desperation. The couple moved to Sarasota from Chicago in 1999 to work for insurance firm Zenith, only to be laid off a few months later. They used their 401(k) and savings to start an insurance business that focused on life-care planning for the insurance and medical industry.

The timing was fortuitous. That's because in 2001, the federal government told the nation's insurance firms it planned to enforce the then obscure Medicare Secondary Payer statute for workers' compensation claims. The 1981 law attempted to protect Medicare from unnecessary financial burdens by forcing insurance firms to make sure workers' comp settlements included projections of lifetime medical costs.

Most insurance carriers needed third-party consultants to calculate the projections under the law. Gould & Lamb capitalized on the newfound opportunity, especially under Williams.

Now Pfeifle plans to find new opportunities for Gould & Lamb while expanding the firm's market share for set-aside claims. The company will launch its branding campaign in May at an industry conference in Vancouver. New products and services, meanwhile, are centered on software and other tools to help clients with the myriad of regulatory and compliance issues in the Medicare Set Aside industry.

And the move to gain visibility in the Bradenton area is also under way.

Since Pfeifle became president, Gould & Lamb has hosted a 5K race, worked with Bradenton officials on an initiative to curb homelessness and donated money to the Boys & Girls Club. Pfeifle realizes many other Gulf Coast companies have been active in the community for decades, so she knows Gould & Lamb has some catching up to do.

“We're not a company you really here too much about in the community,” says Pfeifle. “We want to become more engaged.”