When choosing a Health insurance program, it's all too easy to drown in an alphabet soup of acronyms -- everything from ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) to WHRN (Whole Health Resources Networks).

In your handyman business, you may fix a deck one day and repair a roof the next. While fulfilling, your career also includes numerous risks. Be sure you purchase the right insurance coverage to protect your business.

This article is adapted from the new publication The Survival Guide for the Evolving Insurance Crisis and the video Are You Ready for Insurance Dot Com?, both written and produced by Edward Curry. The article appeared in Missouri Agent magazine and is reproduced by permission.

SAMPLE AGENCY BUSINESS PLAN

It's a world in which insurance is converging with financial services, virtual companies are challenging traditional suppliers for market space, and agencies and brokerages are feeling the competition from new distribution channels.

When you experience those fearful moments of awkwardness or self-doubt, what’s your response? Bill Cates describes how your response to the everyday fears in life (business and otherwise) will make a huge difference in how successful you become.

Information overload has serious implications. Failure to respond to a client or carrier request can be harmful from both an E&O and a client service perspective. Laura Nettles tells you how to manage your work intelligently when everyone is expecting an immediate response.

This article should challenge your thinking and management style and create new opportunities for you to build more Personal Lines sales. To improve your sales, your staff must change how they see themselves, develop their own reasons for doing what you want them to do, establish strategies to use the skills they already have, and adopt new ways of communicating.

Many marketing managers and representatives may ask: "Why is a sales center important to me? Isn't it designed for niche- or target-marketing? How would this fit into my company, that wants Main Street business?"

Having a marketing-representative background provides me with a unique perspective on sales centers. I know that the marketing representative is much more than a "go-for" problem-solver, running down endorsements, acting as portable shrink between underwriters and agents, or being "the official news agency TAS," spouting party line. I know that marketing is the precursor to selling.

f you were managing a start-up band, would you depend solely on Lady Luck? Would you rely on Fortune dumping a great songwriter/arranger in your lap, great musicians who can actually get along, and a strong, powerful record company backing you? Would you just wait without searching for talent, obtaining signed contracts, securing studio time, or acquiring any backing? Of course not. Chris Burand wonders why so many agency principals take this approach to getting good producers.