If you’re in sales, you know the feeling. It’s the middle of the night about two weeks after starting a new job. You were enthusiastic and could hardly wait to get going. Now, your head is full of doubts. You try to shove them aside, but they don’t go away. “Everything is new,” you tell yourself. “I just need to give it a little more time.” However, the doubts keep coming back.
The gap between what you were told about the job and what’s actually happening grows wider by the day. After about three weeks, you finally ask yourself, “Have I made a mistake?”

BIRTHDAY LETTER Dear (Customer Name), Just a quick note to wish you a very Happy Birthday from the Personal Insurance Department of the (Your Agency Name). More often than not, we seem to be wr...

BOMBS by Douglas Henderson Bomb threats and actual detonations have become an all-too-frequent problem for American business. This article discusses: Responses to a Bomb Threat ...

What you want will only get done if you make it an A+ priority. Jack Fries tells you how a business plan can reward you with survival, planned growth, and profit.

CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS TO CULTIVATE SALES by Maribeth Kusmeski Cultivating relationships proactively is often an afterthought. Were just too busy trying to get through the workloa...

DOCUMENT EVERYTHING! by Grace Bauer Document every phone call, visit, and staff conversation - to, from, or about an insured or otherwise pertaining to a particular account. Whether ...

You are not in control.
Your employees are volunteers.
There's no such thing as a long-term carrier relationship....

Although the reasons to plan are as endless as the individual needs of each agency, there are a number of common factors. Jack Fries reviews the importance of planning to your agency's success.

What we say does matter. Unfortunately, most of us don't listen to the words that we use. They might seem harmless, but what messages are we sending to others about ourselves and how we perform our jobs? In this article, John Graham looks at some of the words and phrases that we all utter on occasion. Very often, we use these phrases as excuses about why something didn't get done.

USING A SMALL, HANDY GIFT Have you ever gotten a little promotional gadget in the mail that turned out to be so handy, you wondered how you ever functioned without it? Bottle openers, ov...