GETTING PERSONAL: IVANS HEART by Jack Burke 'If you have a touch-tone phone, press 9 hellip; To file a grievance, hang up and call someone who cares.' Ever feel as though ...

We've all read about excellence, heard about excellence, talked about excellence, and quite frankly may be sick to death of excellence because the parameters...

IF PRODUCERS COULD PRODUCE By Chris Burand How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Or for agencies, how much production could a producer produce if a produc...

INTERVIEWING: MODULE III-A INTRODUCTION Now that you know where to look and for whom you're looking, it's time to work on the interviewing process. This section...

IS CUSTOMER LOYALTY DEAD? by JoAnna Brandi When an agency meets some or all of our expectations we usually say that we're satisfied. When an agency goes a few steps further ...

KEEP THE HUMAN TOUCH IN CUSTOMER SERVICE by Jack Fries For better or worse, electronic commerce is changing the relationship between consumers and vendors. It's often for the worse in cu...

MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES by Jean-Pierre Potvin To direct the performance of individuals or groups of employees properly, managers need simple, efficient, and, above all, flexible methods. Manage...

Eventually, almost every employer after employer needs to deal hiring low wage earners who are seldom motivated toward high performance.

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.

Imagine a forest ranger complaining of a forest having too many trees. Absurd, isn't it? And yet how often in your own job have you thought about how great work would be if you only didn't have to deal with customers? This business - and our jobs - depend on customers. They are not an annoyance; they are our employers!