As this is being written millions of Americans are wrestling with the wreckage wrought from the one-two-three punch delivered by hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. At the same time, residents on the West Coast can hardly be blamed for casting a wary eye south to the damage resulting from Mexico’s second earthquake this year. And then there are the wild fires that seem to continually plague California and Washington State.

And, who knows if there’s more to come.

What this all leads up to is the subject of disaster preparedness. That’s a subject Agency Sales initially addressed in 2012 in the aftermath of a pre-winter snowstorm crippling the Northeast that came on the heels of Hurricane Irene.

Here’s how one of the pundits who proliferate on the cable news channels last year emphasized the need to prepare in advance for any sort of man-made or natural disaster: “No one wants to die, but we all have life insurance. No one wants a hurricane knocking on their door, but that’s why we all should have a plan to deal with it.”

MANA and Agency Sales have long advocated the need for independent representative agencies to have in place strategic, marketing and succession plans. In the face of any number of disasters that might come their way, doesn’t it make just as much sense to create and implement disaster plans?

Borrowing slightly from the article that appeared in the January 2012 issue of Agency Sales, it’s not unexpected that reps would tend to ignore the need for disaster planning since they’ve already got more than enough on their plates just keeping their businesses running smoothly under the best of conditions. With an emphasis on the word “reasonable” shouldn’t a plan be in place that at least calls for the protection of agency staff and property? With that as a beginning a plan should include the following:

• Identifying how to get critical business operations running as quickly as possible.
• Minimizing the amount of downtime to ensure that customers and principals aren’t lost to the competition.

Moving on from there, these are some basic steps that ought to be included in a plan:

• Identify the potential impacts that threaten the business and their potential severity.
• Put a framework in place for building resilience.
• Create response procedures to prevent chaos and get the business quickly going again.
• Make a well-thought-out business recovery plan.

The fact remains, however — and this was probably borne out following last year’s storms — that disaster plans remain primarily in the purview of companies and corporations larger than the typical rep firm. If that’s the case, here’s the problem — those smaller companies don’t know what they’re going to do when and if their building is flooded or burned down. Where they are going to go and how they will redirect their computer and phone operations remain a concern. Simply put, they don’t have a plan.

Preparing After the Fact

Just as the home owner makes a frantic call to a security company the morning after their home has been burglarized, business owners only begin to realize the severity of a situation following some sort of a mega-event. People prepare because they get worried about the big hurricane but they actually much more often have an event because of something that happened at their location.

A real-world example of local disaster concern was included in that article of six years ago when an Agility Recovery executive recounted his conversation with a Houston, Texas, business owner. Agility Recovery is a Denver, Colorado-based company that has carved out a niche for itself providing disaster recovery services to North American organizations for more than two decades.

According to the executive, “I was going through my spiel and talking about how we’re going to get prepared for this and to be ready. He actually stopped me midway through and explained that sure he was worried about hurricanes because they come ashore and they affect a lot of people. But he admitted that he was much more worried about that thing that’s going to impact just him — because it affects just his business and his customers. What happens then is that customers call him and get a busy signal indicating that no one’s at the company. They’re going to quickly look elsewhere for service. If it’s a widespread event and everyone in town is affected, then he’s probably going to get a few days’ latitude because they know everyone is in the same boat.”

Quick Response Is Key

That company’s obvious major concern is the fact that only he is affected. “I’ve got to be able to respond much more quickly if it’s just me.”

Confronted with that response, the executive responded, “We then talk about core things that people can do and one of things we recommend is that whatever they put in place for their plan and processes — whether they use a service like mine or they’re just going to try to do this on their own — they should sit down and test that plan. They should get all of the stakeholders that are involved, put them in a room and walk through it because if they conduct an exercise, they’re going to learn what assumptions they made in their plans that didn’t hold water. You want to learn those facts when it doesn’t matter. Finding that out when the hurricane or fire hits is too late. You’re much better off finding the holes, the gaps in your plan, when it’s pretend vs. when it’s the real thing. When the real thing hits, you’ll learn other things that failed. You can’t conceive of everything that could happen.”

While the typical manufacturers’ rep firm may not need a plan that’s as robust or extensive as that of a large corporation, there are some basics that should be included:

• Take whatever steps are necessary to assure the safety of your personnel, property and data.
• Back up data and be able to access that data from somewhere.
• Determine how you are going to continue communication with customers. If you lose cell phone service, how do you keep open the lines of communication?
• Taking the previous point a step further — what’s the message you’re sending to customers and principals if you can’t communicate with them? How do you plan on continuing to work with them on a day-to-day basis? Most people will give you a pass for a short time, but once you pass the understanding and compassion stage, what happens? What will happen is that they will look elsewhere for a business partner.

Contacted in the aftermath of last year’s latest round of disasters, Scott Teel, senior director, communications, for Agility Recovery, provided additional insight into the need for disaster preparedness.

According to Teel, “We respond to thousands of requests for information during a hurricane — but not so much on sunny days. But just think for a moment about the nature of the business that independent reps are involved in. They’ve made a promise to customers and principals that they’d be there to serve them no matter what happens. American business leaders and consumers are expecting immediate response no matter what the circumstances are. That’s why it’s so important to be accessible and proactive when customers have a need.”

Proactive Planning

That’s why it’s so important for reps to be proactive in their planning and always be looking one step ahead. “We make an assumption that all we have to do in a time of need is to turn on our iPhone, but that’s hardly the case,” Teel advises. “Look at the difficulty FEMA had orchestrating a recovery in Puerto Rico. You’ve got to be thinking ahead as to your power and technology needs. When those services fail, emotions are high and the reactions of customers are going to be drastic.”

When asked whether a business ought to be planning for specific disaster recovering steps (e.g., hurricanes in Texas, earthquakes on the West Coast or blizzards in the Midwest and East), Teel emphasized that the thought process ought to be not necessarily to plan for a specific event, but rather any event that could affect your business. “We encourage customers to think about the critical functions of their business and then work backwards from there. There’s really no need to plan for a specific major event when you realize that more common events such as fires or communications interruptions or plumbing mishaps can affect just one business.”

To aid in the planning process, Teel points out that there are any number of online informational services interested parties should access. The U.S. Government’s Small Business Administration is one source as is Agility Recovery’s own website, www.agilityrecovery.com. At the latter site a number of checklists detail what precautions to take in the face of winter weather, hurricanes, tornadoes and power interruptions.

Teel cautions that it’s common for a company to plan forever as to how they’re going to react in the face of a disaster, but the critical thing is “to take action today.” He advises the creation of a formalized disaster plan. “It’s great if you have a relatively small company and have discussed what you’re going to do. But what happens if the owner of the company who is charged with directing disaster operations is off on a second honeymoon or otherwise away from the business? Sure, you can try and grab a member of the owner’s family and ask them what to do, but in general, the employees are left to fend for themselves. It’s important to actually write down the steps that should be taken.”

He continues that if that’s what a company should do, the biggest mistake most companies make is to not plan. “Failing to plan is planning to fail,” he said. “If you don’t know the first things about your company’s power and communications requirements, now is the time to learn. Learn about what kind of generator would supply your temporary needs. Learn about the bandwidth you need to maintain communications with customers and principals.”

Nothing comes without a cost and Teel addresses the concern of budgeting for disaster recovery when he says, “What you budget depends upon the needs of your customers. Are your customers small local businesses or are you dealing with the government? The more sophisticated the needs of your customers, the more demands will be placed on your budget. Think for a moment about large banking institutions like Wells Fargo or Chase — they can’t afford to have any downtime. As a result, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on their plans. On the other hand, the longer you can afford to be out of touch and still maintain service to customers, the more wiggle room you have.”

MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].