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Restaurants And Taverns — A Potential E&O Headache
Restaurants and taverns cause more than their fair sha...ational Insurance Co. E&O Bulletin and is reproduced by permission.

... for family-style and fast-food restaurants and is located in a growth area. If the program is relatively new and the carrier does not have a large grou...ce the agency is positioned for growth and able to take advantage of opportuni...

...ntrol, or because they don’t understand the process. In this article, John Gra... stacks of meaningless, uninteresting, and dull words. The solution is to let ...

... common error that salespeople make and accounts, more than anything else, for lost orders and prospects who never become customers. ...siness with you takes far more insight and skill.

... , short-term victories can be built upon. First, let's start with markets. Identify a class of business for which you have a market or two with competitive pricing and enhanced Property or Liability coverage forms. This tells you the carrier wants that class of business. Build your initial marketing around that area. For example, let's assume the agency has a good program and market for family-style and fast-food restaurants and is located in a growth area. If the program is relatively new and the carrier does not have a large group of agents in the agency's marketing area, prices will probably be competitive. This class of business is a focused-strength area that you would do well to pursue for some quick-growth business. Once the plan is developed for this class, you can follow the same approach for other ... prospecting effort. Get a fax number, number of employees, expiration date or expiration month, current carrier and agency, etc. 2. If you or your producer are making cold calls, take along a camera and take a picture of each one you call on. While you are there, estimate the building size and other physical characteristics of the building: estimated age, existence of a bar or drive-up window, etc. Use cold calls to screen out undesirable and/or ineligible business and then update your prospect profile. Cluster cold calls in an area you need to be in anyway. Use the travel route as a cold-call route for prospects on the way to your appointment. If you are going to make only cold calls and have devoted a block of time to it, ...

... at full speed. Such tricks only serve one purpose: to undermine the credibility and integrity of the company making the offer. Yes, the tactic might help grab a few sales, but it will alienate far more prospects. 4. Watch out for the early adopters. It has become conventional wisdom that getting early adopters on board has enormous value and leads to success. Whether you're opening a restaurant, launching a product, or initiating a service, the earlier people adapt it, the better. That makes sense, doesn't it? Jumping on this bandwagon, it might be a good idea to consider another view. Researchers Jonah Berger of The Wharton School and Ga Le Mens of Barcelona's Universitat Pompeau Fabra have shown that the "velocity of the adoption might affect the abandonment." In ... relationships, while calculated or sustained persistence might produce more solid long-term results. 5. Don't let a lack of vision kill your business. What we don't know can blindside us easily. Before Apple launched the iPod a decade ago, there were dire predictions of its failure because no one would actually buy songs. It was the same story before the iPhone arrived; specifically; that it would be barred from the Enterprise. It was until employees revolted and demanded that it be made available to them. We heard it all again with the launch of Apple's iPad. Plenty of people predicted that it would fail. As one owner of a small company selling management software systems said, "Even if there were no other issue with it, the most important reason I can't justify it for my ...

...s been lost because of poor service and poor treatment than because...ncy screens calls; to ask for the name and then ignore it bolsters th...