Independent broker blog: 16 years young

September 2009 marked the 16th anniversary of the opening of our branch in Hoddesdon and we wanted to celebrate the event, to mark the achievement and say a thank you to our customers and staff.

We also saw this an opportunity to raise funds for our chosen charity The Willow Foundation and partnered up with another local company, Sheppherds estate agents who were also celebrating 16 years in Hoddesdon.

I must confess that at the out-set I saw the whole event as an opportunity to meet and greet customers, old and new and a bit of a PR exercise with some local dignitaries and the local press. I left all of the organising to Sarah, my wife and finance director at Ashbourne Insurance and Diane Sanders from Sheppherds, who along with our PR consultant, Mary Sykes started the process of inviting guests, organising the catering, raffle prizes, venue etc etc.

The theme of the evening was to celebrate everything that is local. All of the guests invited had local businesses or live in the immediate vicinity. All the caterers were also local as was the entertainment, a fun casino and football freestyler, Billy Wingrove.

All the sponsors of the event and anyone who helped was local, all the raffle prizes came from local companies and organisations, even our chosen charity The Willow Foundation is local.

Sarah and I are very keen to tell anyone who will listen that we are still here, 30 years after the business was started and 16 years after opening the branch in Hoddesdon, still doing what we have always done, long after most other local insurance brokers have come and gone.

We had very conservatively given ourselves a target of raising £1,500 from our raffle prizes and donations on the evening. The Willow Foundation, founded by ex Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson and his wife Megs, is a unique charity that organises and funds very special, morale boosting days out for the 16 to 40 year olds with life threatening illnesses.

Myself and fellow directors were inspired by the stories of seriously ill people who get such comfort, respite and sheer joy from being able to make a dream come true – and for many this is their last chance of a special day out. The foundation hopes to take around 1500 people on special days this year at an average cost of £1,600 per event.

The event itself took place at our premises in Hoddesdon, on a Thursday evening in September. We had in excess of one hundred and fifty people attend including one or two famous faces and the mayor. The weather smiled upon us and from the feedback we’ve received a good time was had by all.

We were able to meet with our customers in a relaxed informal atmosphere, staff who are mainly office bound were able to meet those they spend so much time talking to on the phone, we were able to thank so many people personally for their continued support and to-date we have raised over £5,000 for the Willow Foundation.

So many people who attended the event felt, like us, that we should all be supporting local business, particularly in this current climate. Many of the local businessmen and women chose to use the event to network with other local businesses and I know of at least half a dozen contacts made that will prove mutually beneficial to those involved.

There are so many people and organisations that we would like to thank for their help and support, I’d particularly like to thank Sarah, Diane & Mary for their hard work and efforts in making the evening such a success.

This is just one way that you can get closer to your customers and bring your customers closer to you. Not every broker will have the same local focus that we do, however I can tell you that if you’re not communicating with your clients, some one else will be.

The event has received a great deal of local press and publicly, a very welcome by-product of the evening itself and has got many customers, new, existing and potential ones talking about their local insurance broker Ashbourne Insurance.

As we continue to canvass local customers for insurance opportunities I’m hopeful that someone would have told them of our celebration, or that they might have seen some of the resulting publicity and at a time when not a great many have a great deal to celebrate and that they too will be looking to support businesses in their local high street.

Our business will be thirty years old in 2011 and we intend to do a similar event to celebrate that.

Peter Smits is managing director of The Ashbourne Insurance Group.