Planning

An organized service contact program can build client relationships, ensure accurate protection for clients, and facilitate...

Electronic document storage is an issue that every agency should address as part of their management process. Steve Anderson offers some ideas to help you stay ahead of the storage curve.

Most insurance agencies would like to be driven by a regular flow of new business from their producer force. However, most agencies find that their producers (owners or not) spend most of their time caring for existing customers, with production relegated to a secondary position. They only have time to prospect and sell when they can break away from service tasks.

However, the producers feel that they should be making more money, whether for non-sales tasks they perform for the agency, for servicing existing customers, or from sales to new customers. Unfortunately, if an agency isn’t growing through the efforts of its producers, it has little additional income available to further compensate these key employees.

On my desk is a calendar from a wire service that distributes press releases and articles to media outlets...

[NAME OF COMPANY HERE]

Presented by:

Producer's Name Here

Date

ABOUT YOUR PROPOSAL

We ask that you do not accept our brief description of the insurance coverages as a complete explanation of the policy terms. A narrative description can never replace a policy. The actual policy language will govern the scope and the limits of the coverage provided. You may wish to consult your attorney concerning this.

Although salespeople (and sales managers) might blame slow sales on the economy or the lack of company marketing, the truth is that everyone can be smarter and more productive. In this article, John Graham focuses on how salespeople — and everyone else in business — can become more productive. Graham challenges us to take a hard look at we do and, more importantly, what we’ve become accustomed to doing.

The virtual office concept, also known as telecommuting or a mobile office, emerged as the American work force shifted from physical labor to knowledge-based work. Workers who create or manipulate information can generally perform anywhere there is a telephone, desk, chair, and computer. Technology enables the knowledge-based worker's office to be portable.

When it comes to marketing, the insurance industry can face a lot of challenges. The landscape of the insurance business has undergone several changes in the past couple of decades. These changes are mostly due to the rise in internet startups selling insurance.

In the realm of technology, Don Tapscott, keynote speaker for ACORD Technology Conference '97, holds the crystal ball. His book, The Digital Economy, has influenced the direction of automation in the corporate world. Excerpts from an interview with Tapscott, published in In ACORD magazine, follow.

Today we are witnessing the early, turbulent days of a revolution as significant as any other in human history. A new medium of human communications is emerging, one that may prove to surpass all previous revolutions, including the printing press, telephone, television, computer, in its impact on our economic and social life.

I think of management as a puzzle: Put the pieces together in the right order, and you have a beautiful picture ? jumble them, and you have a pile of pasteboard. In this document, Mike Manes offers guidelines that will help you assemble a masterpiece.