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... 1. Would you recommend this company? 2. What about this company do you like/dislike? 3. Why did you choose this rating? Submit This Anonymously Submit Cancel Contact Us contact_phone Click to call Unfollow First name: Last name: Email: Are you sure you want to deactivate your CompleteMarkets Company Profile Deactivate Cancel Loading.. About Us Services Jobs PR Newsletters Employees Articles Blog Photos Group Connections Reviews IMMS Library Immerse yourself in our stacks. Take some time and browse through our library. We have thousands of articles, checklists, tip sheets, sales letters, and more! Communications Marketing Customer Service Planning Finance/Accounting Risk Management Human Resources Selling Legal and E&O Technology Life/Financial Services Glossaries Management Resources & Links Categories Popular Recent All Back Your Local High School - A Pool Of Telemarketing Talent 4/30/2014 12:00:00 AM by CompleteMarkets Editor This content has not been rated yet. When it comes to prospecting, every agent has done his or her fair share cold calling on the phone, the White Pages in hand, furiously dialing for dollars. Godwin & Johnson, an agency in Oak Lawn, IL, solved this problem by diving into a pool of local talent to implement what the agency calls the most important element in its Personal Lines marketing program. WHAT THEY DO Under the producers' supervision, a part-time staff of four high school juniors (11th graders) works for two hours per evening Monday through Thursday. They develop 80 to 100 X-dates per evening, which is a lot for a relatively small cash outlay. The agency ...

... performance this relatively simple approach of calculating a raise or bonus will generally provide the results you want: rewarding people for the agency's and for their individual performance over the past year. But if you have a lot of long-term employees, calculating their raise or bonus as a percentage of their already high compensation might not be a good idea. You might shortchange newer and lower paid employees who might've outperformed others during the year, because you'll calculate their raise or bonus from a lower base. This situation can create morale problems and cause top performers to shut down. Instituting a performance point system of calculating raises or bonuses can eliminate the negative effects of setting increases as a percentage of base salary. This can also facilitate tying the increase to overall agency results. In this approach you create a bonus pool based on agency profit, annual growth, or any combination of factors. Some agencies set up the pool based on entire agency results. This is particularly popular with smaller firms. Others create a pool based on the results of a department, specialty line of business, or team. Or you can personalize a bonus program for each employee, again usually as part of the performance evaluation plan. It's important to set the rules in advance, establish a formula for creating the bonus pool, and a method for dividing it. Be sure to test the calculations against some hypothetical situations before you announce the results to employees. You don't want to find at the end of the year that you've agreed to pay a lot more than you'd anticipated. There are several ways to create an agency ...

...ferent ways to establish the bonus pools and to divide up the available dollar.../supervisor). Several different bonus pools may be created, with some agency e...

... x No Thanks Loading.. Communicating With The Media 4/30/2013 by CompleteMarkets Editor , Sally Praskey This content has not been rated yet. COMMUNICATING WITH THE MEDIA by Sally Praskey Reporters are like alligators; you don't have to love them, but you DO have to feed them. Steven Poole, director of corporate communications, Gerber Products  The media have been called many things, perhaps the most colorful of which was the description coined by entrepreneur-and media magnate-Conrad Black, who likened reporters to a swarming, grunting mass of jackals. But, like them or hate them, the media play an influential role in society and must be dealt with appropriately. As respected newscaster and journalist Knowlton Nash puts it, the media are not perfect, but they are a necessity. Conceding that reporters often thrive on crisis in a sort of feeding frenzy, ' Nash told attendees at a Canadian Risk & Insurance Management Conference in Halifax that the media's job was not to be your friend-or to be your enemy. The media's job is not to respect your self-image or to shape our reporting to your objectives and needs. Our job in the media is to be assertively independent, to be insatiably curious in chasing a story . . . and to provide a fair reflection of reality. Nowadays, a media-relations strategy is no longer a luxury of corporations, said Nash. The more you know the media and their objectives and their needs, the more insurance you're going to have to minimize the risk in a crisis situation, ' he explained. Pointing out that it was critical for senior management to buy ...

... Required) Please consider the following: 1. Would you recommend this company? 2. What about this company do you like/dislike? 3. Why did you choose this rating? Submit This Anonymously Submit Cancel Contact Us contact_phone Click to call Unfollow First name: Last name: Email: Are you sure you want to deactivate your CompleteMarkets Company Profile Deactivate Cancel Loading.. About Us Services Jobs PR Newsletters Employees Articles Blog Photos Group Connections Reviews IMMS Library Immerse yourself in our stacks. Take some time and browse through our library. We have thousands of articles, checklists, tip sheets, sales letters, and more! Communications Marketing Customer Service Planning Finance/Accounting Risk Management Human Resources Selling Legal and E&O Technology Life/Financial Services Glossaries Management Resources & Links Categories Popular Recent All pools Articles tagged with pools Back Catastrophe Preparedness Tips This content has not been rated yet. CompleteMarkets Editor 4/30/2013 10:40:32 PM CATASTROPHE PREPAREDNESS TIPS In Case of Catastrophe, What Will You Drink? Such questions as: How much water will be needed? ' How long will stored water last? .. All Articles by CompleteMarkets Editor Comments (0 ) Paying For Performance This content has not been rated yet. CompleteMarkets Editor , Carol Hammes 4/30/2013 10:36:15 PM PAYING FOR PERFORMANCE by Carol Hammes Half the agencies responding to our recent Agency Compensation Survey reported paying CSRs additional compensation to reward them for their .. All Articles by CompleteMarkets Editor Comments (0 ) The Role Of Life In A Merger This content has not been rated yet ...

... want or if you have no such program, it is time to consider implementing one for next year. Even if you do have a good program now, chances are that it will need to be tweaked or changed entirely within a year or two. You should have a new plan ready when and if the results start becoming less than satisfactory. Examples of Performance-Based Programs Some agencies have one program for everyone. Some separate them out by department. Some have individualized plans for each employee. Some have a combination of all three. Some base the computations on profit, some on revenue growth, some on contingents, and some on a formula combining profits and revenues. For the agency or department programs, two basic decisions must be made: a formula must be devised for creating the bonus pool, and a method should be calculated for dividing it up among the employees. The following examples are provided to give you an idea of where the research and creativity has led other agencies. Remember that all the principals must agree with the plan and commit themselves to it. And be sure to test the formulas with some what if' situations before you announce the program to the employees. You Don't want to come down to the end of the year and find that you have agreed to give away the store. The sample formulas shown below have worked for a number of firms, but you may need to change them to fit your particular situation. Sample Agency/Department Bonus Pool Formulas 25% of increase in revenues from prior year 4% of increase in premiums from prior year ...

... positions, and 42% expected problems in finding professional staff. Statistics like these indicate that finding quality new-hires is one of management's most pressing issues. The insurance industry is not immune to this problem. When agents and brokers search for new employees-producers and CSRs, in particular- they face the same challenges as any other business. Payroll is one of an insurance agency's or brokerage's largest expense items. When the time spent each year finding, selecting, and managing people is added, personnel management becomes the second most important agency function, after sales. Sales and personnel issues often combine. Your marketing efforts will by greatly enhanced if the sales function is performed by the right people, who are properly trained and managed. Finding and keeping agency personnel can be defined as: 1) generating a pool of candidates from whom to select, 2) selecting between candidates, and 3) managing them effectively. Finding good people can be a problem, in spite of the availability of workers and the perks of working for a local insurance agency, such as working in one's home town, in a professional environment, with competitive pay and benefits, and close, family-like atmosphere deriving from the typical agency's size. Despite these excellent advantages and selling points, even generating a list of candidates is difficult and frustrating. A scarcity' of labor results from a demand that is greater than the supply. Labor scarcity can be resolved in these ways: by redefining what agencies are looking for, taking care that the expanded definition still makes business sense, so that the number of people who are valid ...

... positions, and 42% expected problems in finding professional staff. Statistics like these indicate that finding quality new-hires is one of management's most pressing issues. The insurance industry is not immune to this problem. When agents and brokers search for new employees-producers and CSRs, in particular- they face the same challenges as any other business. Payroll is one of an insurance agency's or brokerage's largest expense items. When the time spent each year finding, selecting, and managing people is added, personnel management becomes the second most important agency function, after sales. Sales and personnel issues often combine. Your marketing efforts will by greatly enhanced if the sales function is performed by the right people, who are properly trained and managed. Finding and keeping agency personnel can be defined as: 1) generating a pool of candidates from whom to select, 2) selecting between candidates, and 3) managing them effectively. Finding good people can be a problem, in spite of the availability of workers and the perks of working for a local insurance agency, such as working in one's home town, in a professional environment, with competitive pay and benefits, and close, family-like atmosphere deriving from the typical agency's size. Despite these excellent advantages and selling points, even generating a list of candidates is difficult and frustrating. A scarcity' of labor results from a demand that is greater than the supply. Labor scarcity can be resolved in these ways: by redefining what agencies are looking for, taking care that the expanded definition still makes business sense, so that the number of people who are valid ...

... ongoing expertise is important. Just as important, the client can readily see why these niches are important and can appreciate the need for help. And each of these niches will be permanent needs which will survive any changes which might come in the insurance distribution systems. Further, I believe it will be difficult or impossible for computers to replace personal expertise in these three categories, with the possible exception of employee benefits. Even that will be a long time off because of the need for personal explanations and enrollers. To illustrate, look at a few recent news items. One headline, Thousands of U.S. Employers Eliminate Pension Plans, Making Retirement Difficult For Baby Boomers, ' appeared in the American Academy of Actuaries, June 1992. You don't have to be a niche marketer to identify this pool of prospects; they're everywhere, and you can reach them handily. The article relates that more than 30,000 U.S. employers have terminated their defined benefit pension plans since January 1990, and 39% of these employers have not provided their employees with new pension plans, leaving thousands of American workers without employer-provided pensions. Those people need help in planning and funding their retirement! Another headline, Americans Growing Old And Poor: Unprepared Retirement Picture Bleak, ' appeared in Life Association News, Aug. 1992. Quoting a recent survey by Merrill Lynch, the article reports that the savings crisis is far worse than previously believed and threatens the American dream of building a better life for successive generations. The study, A Rude Awakening From The American Dream, ' found that as the baby-boom ...

... x No Thanks Loading.. Forming Richer Client Relationships: The CRM Solution 4/30/2013 by CompleteMarkets Editor , Patricia Czech This content has not been rated yet. In the shallow end of the pool, the little tykes are splashing around with their water wings. You wade in waist high, trying to avoid horseplay as your fingertips and toes turn to prunes. The deep end where the big fish swim is another world entirely. Divers plunge, some reaching the bottom of the pool. Patricia Czech explains why staying in the shallow end and overlooking opportunities is a mistake that you can't afford to make. It's a lot like that in e-business today. Companies have reached a point where they're trying to move beyond a shallow, cursory view of their customers, and are plunging into deep, rich customer relationships. Their goal is to offer better customer service, sell more goods and services, and target the needs of specific, lucrative customers. So what's considered deep? For an organization to deliver value, it must learn from every customer interaction, and adapt to how the customer wants to interact — via e-mail, phone, Internet, or in person. What's more, if a customer calls a company, they want to be dealt with in the context of their last interaction with the organization, regardless of the channel they used to contact the company. This requires gleaning sales databases, and tapping into transactional systems for the most relevant data on the customer — basically implementing a combination of operational and analytical customer relationship management (CRM) . Retailers and catalog companies are ...