10 STEPS TO OVERCOME COMPETITION by Jack Burke Remember the first time you experienced a Chinese box set? As each box opened to reveal a smaller box, you wondered with childlike curiosi...

There's nothing better for business than a booming economy. Unfortunately, it often encourages faulty thinking and spawns erroneous ideas. When sales are strong and profits meet projections, we're quick to take the credit. When things go sour, external forces get the blame.
A good economy tends to mask distorted thinking and inappropriate ideas. For example, personal computer sales have been drifting downward, even while prices have been dropping. Manufacturers are petrified. Out of near desperation, they jack up power to a sizzling 500 MHz to try to capture customer attention. Just as this happens, free PCs appear. In the midst of all this, one company rediscovers itself. To IBM's credit, it figured out what business it's in: solutions.

The goal in business is to outdistance the competition and make profitable sales by producing more customer-friendly products or services. To reach this goal, you need an advantage to improve your batting average-but it's getting more difficult and complicated to obtain this advantage, let alone keep it.

A CPA firm spends $11,200 on a Web site that attracts only a handful of visitors. An insurance agency invests $80,000 in an advertising campaign and no one sees the ads. An alternative health clinic sends out 8,000 direct mail fliers and gets 26 responses. A manufacturer spends $28,000 on an attractive brochure that no one uses.

But, this article is about the fundamentals of marketing and communications for an insurance agency (or any consumer facing business's marketing). In my opinion, if you can stick to nurturing these fundamentals regularly, then all the advanced and future enhancements will come naturally. It doesn't matter whether the role you play in the agency is Principal, Producer, CSR, Admin or any customer facing role, in more ways than one, these fundamentals should apply to you.

A BALANCED APPROACH TO MARKETING by Steve Anderson Just like you, each week I receive e-mails and read articles from different business and marketing experts. A common theme Ive no...

A MARKETING MINDSET CREATES CUSTOMERS by John Graham As the insurance organizations marketing meeting began, the president stated, We need more sales. This might see...

ADVERTISING FOR HELP by Al Diamond INSURANCE Licensed P/C agent. Benefits Call Sonja at (856) 555-5555 (Cost $27.36 for Sunday insertion) How attractive is this advertisement? Would you be ...

AGENCY MANAGEMENT: SEVEN BIG STRATEGIES by Pamela A. Millard and Diane M. Herbert Plan your agency around these seven key strategies, and the ups and downs of the market will be just an in...

AGENCY MANAGEMENT: SEVEN BIG STRATEGIES by Pamela A. Millard and Diane M. Herbert If you build your agency around these seven key strategies by Pamela A. Millard and Diane M. Herbert, the up...