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... by CompleteMarkets Editor This content has not been rated yet. PRINTING COMPANY IMPLEMENTS A LOW-COST EAP WORKING PARTNERS Rapid Bind, a trade binder in Portland, Oregon that deals only with printers, is described by its owner John Goche as a sliver of the printing business. During the company's 13-year history, its work force has grown to 35 employees. Late in 1985, Goche realized that severe drug problems had developed among his 21 employees. Several were suspected of using drugs on the job and during breaks. After the daily shifts, evidence of drug use could be found near the company parking area. The younger employees, new to the world of work, were drawn to this group, for whom the peer-pressure message was use' rather than don't use. Goche's efforts to find help led him to a counselor who agreed to talk to the crew. Thereafter, peer pressure started to work in reverse. But, the problem persisted. The need for intervention became fully apparent in July 1989 when a six-year term employee who was 25, married, and had a nine-month-old child committed suicide. The other employees were emotionally drained and simply could not produce a product. Again, a counselor was brought in to talk with employees, collectively and individually. With this help, It was amazing how quickly we healed, ' said Goche. Late in 1989, drug testing and employee assistance programs (EAPs) were subjects discussed at trade meetings Goche attended. Goche obtained further information from the Oregon Small Business Council and drafted his own statement. At a meeting sponsored by the Pacific Printing Industries (PPI) ...

... places to look. For one, call the publications that you want the agency to appear in and ask the editors whom they know and what PR consultants they prefer to work with. Another source is businesses about the same size as yours (other than your competition), who seem to appear in the media on a regular basis. Call the owners and ask them if they have a PR advisor or know of one. Another source of names is your local publicity club or chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) . You should probably cross-check the names you get from other sources against the membership lists of these groups anyway. Be wary of any PR practitioner that has no professional trade-group affiliations. Last but not least, you can check the Yellow Pages under public relations counselors' or the business-services advertising section of your local business publications. HOW TO SELECT YOUR ADVISOR Now that you have a list, begin the selection process. Start with about six names. Call them, introduce yourself, and ask if they can handle the PR needs of a firm of your size, and if they are interested and available to work on your account. If they are, ask them to send some material and background on their practice, and, if appropriate, schedule an appointment. Be wary of any PR practitioner who will not send advance materials or promises but doesn't deliver. Effective PR is done mostly with the written word and prompt follow-up. You don't want to hire a shoemaker whose kids go barefoot. Look at the material provided, noting the amount and quality ...

... by CompleteMarkets Editor This content has not been rated yet. PRINTING COMPANY IMPLEMENTS A LOW-COST EAP WORKING PARTNERS Rapid Bind, a trade binder in Portland, Oregon that deals only with printers, is described by its owner John Goche as a sliver of the printing business. During the company's 13-year history, its work force has grown to 35 employees. Late in 1985, Goche realized that severe drug problems had developed among his 21 employees. Several were suspected of using drugs on the job and during breaks. After the daily shifts, evidence of drug use could be found near the company parking area. The younger employees, new to the world of work, were drawn to this group, for whom the peer-pressure message was use' rather than don't use. Goche's efforts to find help led him to a counselor who agreed to talk to the crew. Thereafter, peer pressure started to work in reverse. But, the problem persisted. The need for intervention became fully apparent in July 1989 when a six-year term employee who was 25, married, and had a nine-month-old child committed suicide. The other employees were emotionally drained and simply could not produce a product. Again, a counselor was brought in to talk with employees, collectively and individually. With this help, It was amazing how quickly we healed, ' said Goche. Late in 1989, drug testing and employee assistance programs (EAPs) were subjects discussed at trade meetings Goche attended. Goche obtained further information from the Oregon Small Business Council and drafted his own statement. At a meeting sponsored by the Pacific Printing Industries (PPI) ...

... either your reactive or proactive efforts to serve their needs, that client's value diminishes for your agency. If you attempt to prospect your own client to mature their needs for insurance with you as the default insurance agent, you will certainly grow the lifetime earnings from that client. This brings us to our second point. All customers are not the same and should not be valued (or treated) similarly. A customer should be valued by you if he brings value to you. If you do not prospect your customers for all of their insurance needs, shame on you, but that still means that the client is worth $150 per year. If you prospect regularly, but the client does not react and places insurance coverage elsewhere, shame on them! They have passed up an excellent counselor that could protect their family and their assets throughout their life, but either way, the client is worth a minimal amount to your agency and cannot be logically treated as you would treat a $60,000 client. How much service can you afford to give a client? The best way to answer this is financially. Using Personal Lines as an example, compute the number of transactions generated in the department during a year. Those numbers are available to any agency using a standard agency management system (such as AMS, Applied, Ebix, etc) . Yes, I know that there are many transactions that do not hit' the computer, but the total transactions will be a factor of the computer transactions, even if they are actually double the number. Next take the ...

... you undoubtedly have customers that will suffer, or at least witness, tragic accidents. How can you help them deal with this trauma? If it's you, a family member, or an employee who have experienced a dire event, how can you surmount the stressful reaction and resume a productive, happy life? TYPICAL RESPONSE TO STRESS People who witness a tragic accident have a wide variety of reactions. About 10 years ago, I saw one-and fell victim to the attitude that I did not need help. The following 90 days were a blur of mixed emotions. I had periodic flashbacks, wild emotional swings, nightmare-interrupted sleep, decreased productivity, anger, and depression. Now I'm keenly aware of the importance of critical-incident stress counseling and strongly recommend that anyone witnessing such an event contact a trained counselor as soon as possible after an incident (24 to 72 hours) . If the person experienced the trauma without actually witnessing it, there may be feelings of guilt and responsibility that also need to be dealt with. In Critical Incident Stress Debriefing, Mitchell and Everly write, Critical-incident stress debriefing accelerates the rate of normal recovery in normal people who are having normal reactions to abnormal events. If the event has happened to you or a co-worker, realize that it may have a ripple effect that will touch all your employees. Many companies have brought in a stress counselor to speak to their employees about the incident and some of the residual effects to expect. This counseling brings a great deal of comfort to the company and facilitates an internal support system that will see people through the crisis. You ...

... their local bank branch or access their account any time online or by phone. The insurance industry must follow suit. This would give clients ease of access to their insurance products and will enhance agency and company profitability. In the insurance industry, downloads from carrier systems will continue to populate the agency management system with current data for its clients. Automated responses will alert agency staff to any changes and inquiries made by their clients to permit them to contact the client if needed. Although we're still some years away from client access to their companies and policies through the agency portal, the remote capabilities of the agency management system vendors and even the carrier Service Centers are steps in the right direction. Agency owners must concentrate their Strategic Plans on converting their agencies from processing shops to relationship managers and insurance counselors for their clients. If they concentrate on actions that will lower their running costs without losing control of their clients, they'll make the right decisions about the progress of automation within their agencies. CONCLUSION Remember, if you use the tides to your advantage, you become a proficient surfer. If you try to stand firm and fight the tide, you'll end up drowning. Learn the future direction of your agency automation system and of the industry and surf the wave to greater efficiency and greater profit. The industry is changing - and automation is one of the primary vehicles speeding this change. E. Al Diamond is president of Agency Consulting Group, Inc., 507 North Kings Hwy., C., Cherry Hill, NJ 08034. You can reach him at (856) 779-2430 ...

..., evaluation, and referral, EAP counselors direct employees having problems to...

... . Unhappily, the word plan' doesn't communicate to the reader the idea of an insurance policy- yet that's what we have to sell, and what a genuine prospect has interest in. A plan is a program made out in advance to accomplish something; it might include a policy, but it's not the same thing. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) understands this, and states that we must call an insurance plan a plan, and a policy a policy. Which leads to our reluctance to use the word insurance. Wrongly, we follow the lead of the insurance salesman. He avoids the word insurance' because the public perceives insurance salespeople as people trying to sell them something they don't want to buy. Thus the insurance salesperson' has evolved to a sort of financial counselor, spending the day designing programs, ' creating estates, ' and developing plans. That doesn't work for us. We must be direct. We must communicate immediately that we're offering the benefits of insurance. Never mind that we're scaring away the great majority of people who have no interest in insurance; we want to make sure only that the very small number of people truly interested in insurance can find insurance' instantly when reading through our mailing. I have a four-page insurance folder from a fine insurance company that sells its policies by mail. The first mention of the word insurance' is on the bottom half of page four. True, the word coverage' is used on pages 2 and 3, but coverage' automatically means insurance' only to people in the insurance industry-not the general ...

...tionship managers and insurance counselors for their clients. If they concentr...