If you’re a newly licensed producer, or transitioning from a customer service representative to sales, figuring out where to start in the sales process is key to your success. Here are 10 top tips you can use now to build your book of business.
As an emerging insurance agent, pointing out your customers’ various coverage needs can not only generate more income and a more committed client, but can also prevent a potential allegation that you failed to offer a vital coverage. This article highlights the difference between an agent’s servicing or selling.
We’ve all seen the media stories about the demise of independent agents from organizations ranging from Google to Walmart getting into the insurance industry. Likewise, even our own publications refer to start-up “disrupters” like Insurify and Lemonade “revolutionizing” the industry. Is this PR or reality? Are their real downsides to consumers buying insurance from such…
Note: Emphasis added by the editor. The definition of a commodity is that the item is completely interchangeable with any other item of the same nature. For example, an ounce of gold is an ounce of gold. A bushel of red wheat is a bushel of red wheat. A barrel of West Texas crude…
Increasingly, agents are discovering that they have customers that they no longer want for one or more of many reasons. Maybe it’s a contractor that generates so much certificate of insurance activity that commissions can’t offset the cost to service the account. Other customers may have “personality” problems or present what agency management perceives as…
The internet and online insurance buying are incredible. Early in 2017, agency producers will become obsolete. Shortly thereafter, agencies themselves will become obsolete. This will happen because three progressions will occur simultaneously.
There are two primary ways to create an uninsured motorist: (1) no auto liability coverage, or (2) auto liability coverage that has an exclusion for what happened. According to an Insurance Journal article, UM experience has gotten decidedly worse. Could it be that this is due, at least in significant part, to increasingly stripped-down auto…
Recently I received an email from a member who was alarmed at the rapid proliferation of exclusions in auto policies. These are exclusions that may not be readily apparent to insureds and they’re certainly not coverage deficiencies that are revealed in the heavy advertising of some of these carriers, including those that tout that their…
One of the key differences between Producers and Service Staff is the nature of their personalities. While the Producer has that sales personality, assertive but not pushy, friendly but focused, reading the signals that the prospect gives to qualify or disqualify them as a potential customer, the Service staff is a helper personality, with intrinsic…
You got your start as a personal lines producer and you’re ready to make a move to commercial lines production. How do you get started? How do you “write” a commercial lines account? Where do you get the coverage and sales training necessary to be successful? In this article, the VU faculty make some recommendations…
