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... insurance agency"? I think we all could agree that it is purely and simply a "sales organization." Certainly it does a great many other functions, but first and foremost a sales organization. When an agency ceases to sell, it is doomed to failure. So, if we are going to succeed as a sales organization in this highly competitive environment, we've got to not only find prospects, but also obtain the expiration dates of those prospects. It seems to me the greatest question in the agency business today is "How and where do I find expiration dates?" Most agencies look through knotholes and find that their vision is so impaired that all they see are a few measly referrals. Our peripheral vision is cut off by the knothole, sources of new business are stunted and we stagnate ourselves in the abyss of no-growth. A solid through-out system of X-dating not only removes the knothole, but also the wall around it, and consequently we find a fuller and clearer picture of what it means to have a viable prospects that have provided us with the date of our next closed sale. Our agency primarily solicits commercial insurance and has utilized an on-going X-dating program for the past four years with a great deal of success. We entered the independent agency system five years ago from the direct agency system of Allstate Insurance Company. It took about a year to realize that for our agency to grow and succeed, we must actively solicit commercial business. Our previous experience as direct writers taught us a valuable lesson about writing insurance, and that simply is this: Very ...