There is very little flashy about Los Angeles-based Continental Commercial Group, except, perhaps, its newly renovated headquarters building. Its tenets are picking up the telephone, knocking on doors, performing thorough field checks, working hard to follow all leads, and keeping the partners' hands on every facet of the operation. This formula has grown the agency from "Herb and me seven years ago to 48 people today," as Merette describes it, working from offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Baltimore. Placements are running about $65 million to $70 million.

Continental Commercial Group

317 South Brand Glendale, CA 91204 818 551-6804

Robert N. Merette, President

Herbert Warmé, Vice President

About 7% of that total comes from a year-old deal with the Building Industry Credit Association (BICA), in which CCG took over the collections division of the member-owned association. As BICA President Richard Nash explains, once the association's board of directors made the decision to outsource that membership function in 1994, it immediately turned to CCG. "I think nine out of 12 board members were clients of [CCG], were happy with them, and thought they'd do the best job," he says. "It was unanimous."
Merette believes an agency must be ready, willing, and able to quickly litigate claims of behalf of clients. To that end, CCG maintains its own in-house legal department with two attorneys on retainer. Once the decision is made to litigate, CCG's staff of paralegals draws up, delivers, monitors, and maintains the paperwork in-house to keep the legal wheels in motion. Since 75% of the agency's business is in California, says Merette, legal costs are manageable for the majority of CCG's clients.

While CCG has adopted technological tools in the form of a PC-based Novell network, skip-tracing through CD-ROM data bases, and digital-document imaging, Merette sees the personal service component of the agency as the key to its success. "We represent a myriad of companies who not only do business all over the world, but are owned by people who come from all over." Kept very busy in multicultural Los Angeles are employees who speak Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Yugoslavian, Russian, Farsi and two Chinese dialects.

Short term, Merette and Warmé would like their growth to slow to a manageable 10-12% annual rate. Long term, Merette sees more of the same, with perhaps some penetration in the Dallas or Atlanta markets. "We're really not large enough to take over something our size, and we're not really interested in getting our this business," he says. "Hell, it's the only thing we know how to do." Each week, Warmé and Merette join their field reps in making sales calls, "We're just working stiffs, trying to keep our business going the only way we know how, by going out there meeting people." Merette says, adding with a chuckle: "I love the characters, and, believe me, there are some real characters in this business."

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