AXA Agents andAir Show

Before discovering this career, I taught school, owned a small business, was a commercial pilot and flight instructor, and served as a youth minister.
About five years ago, I came up with an idea that blends all of those aspects of my background to help build my team at AXA by working with community leaders and our local elementary school.

At the time, I was a district manager for AXA in Roanoke and lived with my family in Fincastle, Virginia, a “bedroom community” of about 15,000 outside of Roanoke.

As a teacher, I had witnessed school enrichment programs, so that was the basis for my idea, but I wanted to do something on a much grander scale.
At first, I developed a program that brought community leaders into the school to share their professional expertise with the children.
This got old soon—the children were bored hearing about what business people do for a living.
So instead, I decided to have community leaders share their hobbies with the children.
I wanted the kids to see that being successful in business will give them the income and flexibility to also have fun in their adult lives.

I talked nine other community leaders into sharing their hobbies with children. Each of us conducted a six-week program featuring our respective hobbies.
I told them, “We don’t want a PowerPoint presentation here. Blow it out! Spend some money, and make it an exciting experience for the children.”

For my six-week program, I chose flying. I’ve been a pilot for 18 years. As a professional pilot, I flew private charters for years and still enjoy being a flight instructor. My team at AXA arranged the following events for our six-week program at the school, calling on many of my fellow flight enthusiasts and students to help. Each event was held at the school, and everyone in town was invited to participate:

First Week We arranged to have a huge hot-air balloon launch from the school grounds.
The children helped set up the balloon, watched it launch, and helped dismantle it once it landed at the school. We had a question-and-answer session at the end.

Second Week We had a hang-glider conduct a demonstration. The kids were very excited about this.
Third Week We had skydivers jump from an airplane. They did what is called “high-performance jumps” and gained a lot of speed during their 1000- to 2000-foot jumps, causing them to slide 70 or 80 feet on the ground before coming to a stop. It was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever seen, and the kids were in awe. I had asked the local doctor, who has children in school, to be on hand in case medical care was needed.

Fourth Week A pilot from U.S. Air came in to show a video about air-to-air refueling. He handed out wings to all of the children and answered questions hat they and the other participants asked. A lot of people from the community who were interested in this subject attended.

Fifth Week We had the hospital’s helicopter land on the school grounds. About 70 children gathered around, asking the pilot questions.
For safety purposes, we set up orange traffic cones a good distance away from the landing area and made sure the children stayed behind them.
We had air-to-ground radios, and I talked with the pilot, guiding him down for his landing.
He “requested” permission from the children to land, so they screamed and waved their arms to let him know they wanted him to land.

Sixth Week For our last demo, we organized an air show. We had six pilots fly their aircraft, including a World War II plane owned by a friend of mine.
They flew in formation and performed stunts above the school for about half an hour.
Most pilots love attention, so when I told them about this event, their responses were similar: “I’d love to fly for the kids!” A lot of people in the community attended this event.

From the moment the hot-air balloon took off from the school that first week, the town was buzzing with talk about what we were doing at the school.

People were saying, “What are those AXA folks going to do next?!” Before long, people were asking us, “What do you guys do, anyway?”
We were building relationships in the community without really trying. Eventually, we heard people saying,
“I want to do business with those AXA guys.”

You may be thinking, this is great for marketing and even prospecting, but what does it have to do with team building?

I included my entire staff in this project, from planning the details to staging the events, and every agent in my district had a responsibility.
For example, one agent was in charge of making sure that we had Little Debbie cupcakes and drinks available for the children.
Another agent was in charge of getting permits, and another coordinated logistics with various officials. Others were in charge of promoting the events.
We called the local newspaper and asked if they would cover the sixth event, which they did.

I worked closely with the school principal to make sure that we did everything the way he asked.
I wanted to make sure that we were sensitive to the possible perception that we were using the school for promotional purposes.
We kept the focus on education and entertainment.

We established the mission as a team, and my agents began to see that if we could pull this off, we would become more visible in the community,
our reputation would grow, and we would begin to build relationships with potential clients and agents.

When we were planning this program, I heard a lot of “We can’t do that” and “This won’t work.” What sounded like an impossible task at first?
—creating air shows at an elementary school—turned out to be a huge success, and every single one of our agents had a part in it.

After that, whenever I would come to the table with more of my big ideas, my agents no longer said,
“That’ll never happen.” Now they say, “It’s just a matter of taking care of each detail and delegating—we can do this.”
Erryn M. Barkett
Executive Vice President, Southern Division
AXA Equitable

Richaard Wong RFP, ChLP, FChFP Best Practices, Training & Development
20/F, AIA Building, 1 Stubbs Road Hong Kong Tel: +852 2832 6762 Fax: + 852 2572 1792 Richaard-kl.wong@aig.com

Check out previous articles at: http://regleaders.blogspot.com