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... create and maintain a GHA Team that is the very best at what we do. &# 160 SPARKS INSURANCE, INC. Welcome to Sparks Insurance, Inc. We are a company that works together as a TEAM. We will: 1) Strive to develop individual and office professionalism. 2) Set and achieve sales and growth goals. 3) Create, establish, and perform efficient work habits and methods. 4) Strive for a unified and pleasant working environment. And last but not least: 5) After accomplishing all of the above, the Sparks Insurance team should become more profitable, and we will endeavor to pass a portion of these profits on to the team members. &# 160 MISSION STATEMENT: Sparks Insurance, Inc. is a full-service insurance agency committed to providing ... for our clients and ourselves through ongoing, rewarding and supportive relationships, by providing insurance and financial services. COMPANY POLICY We will achieve the Mission Statement: With highly qualified, sincere, caring and motivated staff and By continually assessing and improving our service and products &# 160 ANCHOR PACIFIC GROUP MISSION To be the vanguard of innovation by combining an array of Life, Health, voluntary employee benefits, Property/Casualty, and Workers' Compensation plans into creative, dynamic and cost-effective programs-designed, marketed, underwritten, and serviced by a single source. &# 160 TRISSEL GRAHAM & TOOLE, INC. DAVENPORT, IOWA MISSION STATEMENT Our mission is to continue to be the most successful independent insurance agency in the Quad Cities. Our objective is to NEVER lose an account as a result of poor service ...

... iceberg. It would be easy to dismiss the carriers and their problems and focus upon the independent agent distribution system, but they are interrelated. As carriers merge, or go belly-up, their producers will be further affected by additional pressures. The property and casualty independent agency distribution system is headed for a crunch! With financial institutions nibbling away at personal lines and more sophisticated risk managers influencing corporate buying habits, the squeeze is on! This compression-bottoms-up with personal lines and top-down with commercial lines-will accentuate the pressures on producers. Today's distribution system must change to accommodate all those pressures. It won't disappear, but it must change. John Cox, formerly of CIGNA and Associated Madison Cos., said in his recent address to the American Bankers Association's National Insurance and Protection Conference, Direct response will never ... the goal, instead of growth. With CIGNA's staggering loss and Mission's disastrous results, one cannot but wonder if the first quarter is the tip of the iceberg. It would be easy to dismiss the carriers and their problems and focus upon the independent agent distribution system, but they are interrelated. As carriers merge, or go belly-up, their producers will be further affected by additional pressures. The property and casualty independent agency distribution system is headed for a crunch! With financial institutions nibbling away at personal lines and more sophisticated risk managers influencing corporate buying habits, the squeeze is on! This compression-bottoms-up with personal lines and top-down with commercial lines-will accentuate the pressures on producers. Today's distribution system must change to accommodate all those pressures. It won't disappear, but it must change. John Cox, ...

... establish a position, an agent should take these four basic steps: Determine current position. Whether you're looking at a particular issue in the industry, such as dwelling limits, or your overall position as an agent, the first step is to analyze what you're currently doing. Determine how your current actions position you. Are your actions congruent with your goals and values? Or have you simply developed habits that dictate how you approach an issue? You should also analyze your support staff. Are they projecting your position accurately? Are their actions reflecting the philosophy of the agency? Question its validity. During the past decade, the relationship between insurance company and agent has changed dramatically. Have you adjusted your actions accordingly? Or are you operating the same way as you did 10 years ago? ... premiums? Positioning and the Agent The insurance industry can learn a lot from the medical profession. The roles of agents also determine their legal responsibilities. Positioning tells the consumer what they can expect from the insurance transaction. It also helps inform clients which responsibilities, if any, remain on their shoulders. Let's look at an industry example to clarify the importance of positioning and expectations. Whenever Paula writes Property coverage, she becomes involved in setting the insurance amount. Recently, she reevaluated her involvement and was troubled by several questions: How should she determine the insurance amount on a building? Are the replacement cost surveys provided by the companies accurate? What's the best way to present the figures to the client? Who bears the primary responsibility for having the dwelling adequately insured? Agents take differing positions ...

... part of the benchmarks. Your location will control the labor cost to an extent, but CSRs should be compensated on ability to meet the agency needs in these areas: 1. Absorb additional new business and growing revenue from existing business. 2. Develop an account to seek out as much revenue as potential. 3. Retain accounts with good client relationships. 4. Develop good money handling' habits and have a low accounts receivable track. 5. Work well with the company underwriters and claims staff. 6. Keep abreast of suspense and maintain adequate time frames for account renewal. 7. Continually educate themselves in the product and the customers' needs. 8. Work well with others in the agency. 9. Recognize that producers have a considerable number of bad habits and take care ... but if you were computing the ratio of labor to expense with a goal of 20 percent salaries to revenues, you would not want to include the Executive Salary, only the clerical salaries. Let's assume that an agency's annualized premium is $2 million and the average commission in the agency is 15 percent. The agency is evenly divided into 50 percent personal lines and 50 percent commercial. The annualized property and casualty revenues would be $300,000. The 20 percent goal of office salaries to gross revenue then would be $60,000. This would include the payment of all benefits and taxes for office staff. Many agencies operate at much higher ratios, depending on their location (urban v. rural) . Next comes the proper ratio of revenue per customer service representative. We ...

... be put on all proposals, and each participant should know what part they play in the re-engineering of your business. An old adage of business is, If you keep doing what you've done, you'll keep getting what you got. In fact, one definition of insanity is repeating what you've done in the past and expecting different results. Because change is difficult and must be continually reinforced until new habits develop, you need to reinforce your changes constantly, and talk to employees and company personnel to determine that everyone is still on track. TRANSACT THE PROCEDURES AND PRACTICES NEEDED TO ATTAIN THE ESTABLISHED OBJECTIVES. The final step is to put the new procedures and practices in writing and establish regular follow-up to make certain that everyone is keeping with the program. In other words, it is time to ... x No Thanks Loading.. Agency Profitability Audits Lead To Greater Success 4/30/2013 by CompleteMarkets Editor , Jack Fries This content has not been rated yet. Almost two years ago, after 10 years of consulting, I accepted a temporary assignment of managing an independent agency that generated 85% of its income from Property/Casualty Lines and 15% from Life, Health, and financial services products. The agency had just been terminated by its primary carrier, which accounted for 82% of its income and 7,000 clients. The agency had also just lost the services of its manager for the past 18 years, as well as every Commercial Lines producer. As if that weren't enough, the only people who were trained to use the agency's brand-new computer system left the agency ...

... be put on all proposals, and each participant should know what part they play in the re-engineering of your business. An old adage of business is, If you keep doing what you've done, you'll keep getting what you got. In fact, one definition of insanity is repeating what you've done in the past and expecting different results. Because change is difficult and must be continually reinforced until new habits develop, you need to reinforce your changes constantly, and talk to employees and company personnel to determine that everyone is still on track. TRANSACT THE PROCEDURES AND PRACTICES NEEDED TO ATTAIN THE ESTABLISHED OBJECTIVES. The final step is to put the new procedures and practices in writing and establish regular follow-up to make certain that everyone is keeping with the program. In other words, it is time to ... Life/Financial Services Glossaries Management Resources & Links Categories Popular Recent All Back Agency Profitability Audits Lead To Greater Success 4/30/2013 12:00:00 AM by CompleteMarkets Editor , Jack Fries This content has not been rated yet. Almost two years ago, after 10 years of consulting, I accepted a temporary assignment of managing an independent agency that generated 85% of its income from Property/Casualty Lines and 15% from Life, Health, and financial services products. The agency had just been terminated by its primary carrier, which accounted for 82% of its income and 7,000 clients. The agency had also just lost the services of its manager for the past 18 years, as well as every Commercial Lines producer. As if that weren't enough, the only ...

... you have written at least three of the same type of account at the close of sale. Identify the account's major competitors and go after them. You've already learned what type of information needs to be gathered, what coverages are needed, and how to market this type of risk to obtain a competitive quote. Some agents also send a letter at the close of every sale to get in the habit of asking for referrals. In Personal Lines, ask for the names of the account's neighbors, best friends, or business associates at the close. If your client approves, approach these referrals using the client's name as the referral source. Thank-you letters to referral sources, enclosing a few more business cards, are also quite effective. Centers of influence - Which organizations, clubs or community events ... these categories: Existing accounts - Have existing accounts been developed adequately? If not, what can be done on an ongoing basis to expand the coverage written for existing clients, to meet their needs, and to improve retention? To avoid another agent or broker getting a foot in the door, offer all clients both Personal and Commercial insurance coverages. You should also sell Life and Group products to Property/Casualty clients. This will further cement the relationship with those clients and helps retention, too. Dead files or quotes - Have accounts that left the firm because of price been x-dated? Has the firm also x-dated those prospects who did not accept the quote due to price, so the account can be quoted again at the next expiration? These are excellent sources of new business because these ...

... for answers and ideas. Use your Mickey nose to sniff out mistakes and bad practices before they affect your customers. Who's responsible for them doesn't matter as much as correcting them. Keep a heads-up attitude in troubleshooting your agency's customer service practices and workflow systems. If you have a weak link, someone you feel isn't as good with customers as they should be, deal with it now. Bad habits spread, and your lack of action to address the problem sends a loud, clear message to your customers that you believe mediocre service is acceptable. Lastly, make sure you aren't that weak link. If you're a manager or lead CSR, just preaching the old Do as I say, not as I do' sermon won't work. If I've learned one thing in my 30 years in ... training. If in-house training even exists, it's most often conducted by the agency owner, who probably has never studied customer service techniques and never functioned as a CSR. Knowing what you want other people to do and how you want them to do it is very different from being able to effectively teach them the necessary skills and motivate them to learn. Attitude counts. Newspapers aren't sold on Disney property because the company doesn't want guests to be in a bad mood from reading negative articles. What do we do to focus on positive attitudes in our agency? How do we motivate our staff members? Being friendly is important. Guests at Disney continually fill out satisfaction surveys listing the costumed characters as the most friendly contacts in the park. This is truly amazing because the actors who portray Disney ...

... they consider buying another policy from you, it's understood that fairness and satisfaction must be delivered, or else the entire line- all policies, including Life, Health, and P/C- might be lost. Life-only agents are not as likely to have that advantage. Files contain much information about each insured. You know not only personal and business data, but also life styles, bill-paying habits, driving histories, financial information, aspirations, plans, and much more, all useful in addressing the Life insurance needs of those folks. Your agency is a constant source of daily change in the financial conditions of your insureds. When an auto accident, burglary, theft, or vandalism occurs, you're the third to know (after the police are informed) . If there's a fire ... location [ ] selling house 4. FAMILY [ ] parent or relative recently deceased [ ] parent or relative recently hospitalized [ ] new job [ ] new baby or [ ] grandchild [ ] any marriage or [ ] remarriage [ ] divorce [ ] active in charity, church, etc. 5. VACATION [ ] estimated departure date ____ 6. CLAIMS Auto [ ] Bodily Injury [ ] Property Damage [ ] Liability-non-Auto [ ] Accident- (non-Auto), first party [ ] Fire, extended coverage [ ] Crime [ ] Hospital 7. [ ] TOTAL PREMIUM MORE THAN $2 ,500 per year 8. [ ] TAX BRACKET 28% 9. [ ] INSURABILITY PROBLEMS [ ] uninsurable or rated in Life, Health [ ] has a health problem [ ] insureds [ ] ...

... other words, the value of an agency is what the present owner or a new owner perceives as its worth to them in ongoing buying power — what they know they can take home at the end of each month over an extended period. This means that profit is the basis for agency value, not commissions. As much as we might talk about multiples of commissions, this is an erroneous habit that we must break. Informed buyers base their agency purchase price on profitability and cash flow, not commissions. Roger E. Thomas, CIC, is president of Thomas & Thomas Agency Consultants and Appraisers, Inc., a national consulting firm located in Livingston, TX. His firm consults on all types of agency management issues. Thomas is chairperson of the committee for establishing the Standards and ... sell an agency can lead to gross overpayment. Why? It fails to consider the profitability of the agency. Unless every agency has the same expense structure — and we know that expenses vary widely from agency to agency — how can a multiple of commissions be accurate? This is a simplistic approach that can be very costly for an agency purchaser. To which commissions should a multiple apply? Just Property/Casualty? Would Life and Health use a different multiple? Should you apply the multiple to gross commissions or to net commissions (after paying producers)? What should you do about commissions relating to the vested ownership interest that some producers have in their books of business? Can you sell commissions that are brokered for another agency and that you don't own? And just what is the correct ...