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...

The previous article (Creating A Successful Plan For Marketing Commercial Lines Part I), presented information about the matrix of the agency book of business, the review of the book of for account development, and a review of company programs and products. In this second of a three-part series, Jack Fries focuses on selecting a proper market.

David and Goliath is no longer news. These days, all a boy needs to kill a big man is a gun instead of a sling and a rock. Similarly, technology has created a new world of competition. A David who understands technology can successfully compete against any corporate Goliath.

E-MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT ARE MORE BRICKS THAN CLICKS by John Graham Although every business should be taking full ad...

FOCUSING ON CLIENT OR PROSPECT NEEDS by Mary Beth Bolen There's a lot of talk about niche marketing or target marketing today. Many speakers feel that it's imperative to find a certain niche i...

GIVE A lsquo;THANK YOU' GIFT by Bill Cates Giving a Thank You gift is a simple strategy that will have people saying good things about you and generating ong...

In 1976, 12 insurance executives spent a day trying to pinpoint the reasons for their success. Their large insurance agency had doubled in size over the last three years. The company's employees had worked hard to achieve a high rate of referrals and were aggressive in their roles as producers. But what factors led to their astonishing success? How did they attract a client? And most of all, what made each client buy and renew year after year?

'We don't want to be all things to all people,' says one agency manager, 'so we want to identify a niche for Life insurance agents to master. Do you have any suggestions?'

Annuities are presently the source of nearly half of Life companies' premium income. A couple of decades or so ago, the figure was just 11%, according to a recent Life Insurance Management Research Association (LIMRA) study.

The major goal of any agency or brokerage can be expressed in just one word: survival.
The mounting failures involving seemingly strong, well-established businesses that have been around for 15 to 75 years are of great concern.
The time has come for agencies and brokerages to take immediate action in order to survive a protracted economic downturn that may extend for several more years in some sectors of business or regions of North America.