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... x No Thanks Loading.. Your Local High School - A Pool Of Telemarketing Talent 4/30/2014 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 learned through trial and error what type of person was best suited to the job. Says Bob Godwin, agency principal, We use four high school girls, preferably juniors and we use only A and B students. We pay them $4 per hour as independent contractors, and each girl obtains an average of 20 X-dates per night. Why the bias toward high school girls? Young men didn't work out because they were too combative. Older persons didn't fit in because the pay was insufficient. Thus, responsible high school females proved to be just the ticket. The girls appear to handle the mentally brutal' work that cold calling can be. They just keep shaking off the abuse and forging ahead, ' says principal Ron Johnson. Another bonus: They also don't ...

... 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 ...

... x No Thanks Loading.. Advice On Developing A Producer Recruitment Program 4/30/2013 by CompleteMarkets Editor , Peggy Mika This content has not been rated yet. ADVICE ON DEVELOPING A PRODUCER RECRUITMENT PROGRAM What advice would you offer an independent agency on a step-by-step basis, for developing a producer recruitment program? ' Peggy Mika Mika Freelance Pensacola, FL A growing agency must have a producer recruitment program in place at all times. Even when there is no specific opening, the astute agency manager is looking for potential new producers. The ongoing plan should have two components: a pool of potential candidates and a method of recruiting on college campuses. The manager should keep a list or pool' of the names of potential recruits at all times. Each name should be kept in a separate file or on a card, and information about the candidate's qualifications should be recorded and updated on the card. The manager should stay in touch with the people in the pool on a regular basis - every quarter or every six months, for example. A phone call, letter, or a lunch meeting will do the trick. The size of the pool should be small and manageable. Names should be added and removed as the manager gets to know the candidates or finds better prospects. The candidates in the pool can be gathered from many sources: people in the office with potential; people in the competitor's office with potential; people who have been recommended by friends; sales agents who call at the agency (the copy machine salesperson); names of friends or their children who have ...

...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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... x No Thanks Loading.. Personnel And Compensation Dilemma 4/30/2013 by CompleteMarkets Editor , Carol Hammes This content has not been rated yet. PERSONNEL AND COMPENSATION DILEMMA by Carol Hammes It's never been easy to attract the best young people to the insurance industry. In a competitive job market, it becomes almost impossible. When the unemployment rate is low, college graduates command even larger starting salaries. How does the average independent agency or insurance company compete with such immediate riches and the opportunity for even greater rewards in the future? Unfortunately, the diminishing pool of viable candidates has come at a time when the independent agency system needs intelligent, energetic, automation-savvy people. In some parts of the country, agencies are so desperate for customer service representatives (CSRs) that they're hiring anyone who's breathing. Producers are brought in even though they score poorly on sales aptitude tests or have already failed at several other agencies. Desperation will often cloud good business judgment, leading to bad hires. An empty desk is better than an employee who pulls down the rest of your staff, adversely affecting sales and productivity. FINDING GOOD CANDIDATES At this point, it's probably better to forget about the recent graduates and try to find producers and other employees elsewhere. But stay in touch with the ones who've gone for the gold. In two years, the company they chose might be going under and they might be much more reasonable about salaries, benefits, working conditions, work ethics, and opportunities. In the meantime, there are several things that you can do. One is to get ...

... system on recruits can make the hiring process orderly and successful. The other alternative is hiring a body' under the gun, which can be expensive, frustrating and demoralizing. And it usually brings in a poor candidate. Ronald Wood says he and his partners have attacked the problem both ways. They are satisfied that hiring bodies' just doesn't work. Wood is executive vice president with McGee & Thielen Insurance Brokers, Inc., Sacramento, CA. Once the partners recognized that their hiring techniques were faulty, they developed a hiring process. It turns out that their process is similar to those advocated by other successful agents and industry consultants. The process begins before a new producer is actually required. We have a backlog of potential prospects, ' Wood said. The individuals who are in this pool may or may not be aware that the agents consider them prospective recruits. he added. Among the prospects are competing agents who might have stolen' an account from McGee & Thielen, people who have submitted resumes which look promising, and the individuals who have caught the attention of a partner. Often someone who is satisfied with his current job, is the agent's best potential new employee. If the agent keeps in touch with that person, and watches for him or her to become discontent, the person can be recruited. When It's Time to Hire If it's time to hire, it might also be time to review agency job descriptions, according to management experts. By reviewing everyone's current workload, the agency managers can determine exactly what job is open. When the opening calls for a ...