Daily sales & marketing tips for insurance professionals

Greetings, Readers of the InsureMe Agent Blog!

Just wanted to let you all know that we’ve been experiencing some technical difficulties here at the Agent Blog, which are keeping us from cleaning the SPAM from the comments and making it difficult to publish some of our posts.

The wonderful folks in our IT department are working on the issue, so please bear with us while we sort this out. And if you could turn a blind eye to those unsightly SPAM comments, that’d make me feel better. Unless you want free ringtones or something…then by all means, click away.

Hmm. On second thought, don’t.

The home insurance drama continues.

In an article reported by The Advocate in Louisiana, Allstate has officially ticked off Insurance Commissioner, Jim Donelon.

The mega-insurer says that Louisiana state law allows the company to drop basic hurricane coverage–including hail and wind damange–for 30,000 policyholders in 18 coastal parishes. Donelon maintains that a state consumer protection law prevents insurance companies from changing or dropping a policy if a homeowner has been insured for at least three years and filed no more than two claims not considered “acts of God”.

Allstate’s legal representative, Lorrie Brouse, said that the law deals only with policy cancellations and nonrenewals.

“We’re not disputing the statue. We’re saying what we’re planning to do doesn’t apply [to it].”

In his rebuke, Commissioner Donelon said that the consumer law doesn’t allow insurers to “gut” policies and that Allstate wrote policies with full knowledge of that law. He expects the issue to be settled by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Check out the full story courtesy of the Insurance Journal here; also be sure to take a look at the thread of comments following the article. Feel free to leave your thoughts and impressions via comments. I’ll keep an eye out for updates and post them here!

[POST AMENDED AND UPDATED 7.31.2006]

[8.2.2006] Check out an update of this story via the Insurance Journal, here.

I’m fairly sure that many of my posts here at the InsureMe Agent Blog have said something along the lines of, “do it before your competitor does” or, “make the change before the competition does.”

I realized this afternoon that I’ve lost focus a bit.

Yes, you always want to supersede your competition. It’s insurance sales–that’s the nature of the beast. But this recent post from Creating Passionate Users snapped me out of the competition funk. Because it’s not all about the competition. In fact, it’s not even remotely all about the competition. It’s about providing a rewarding and memorable experience for the consumer.

So take a look at the Creating Passionate Users post, see if you can draw some parallels, and try to realign your focus…keeping the competition on the periphery, of course.

I came across this little story by way of the Insurance Coverage Law Blog today, detailing the events of a class-action lawsuit against American Family Insurance Company. The named plantiff, Manuel Hernandez, died in 2004…but counsel continued to try the case as if he were alive–effectively keeping the plantiff’s death a secret.

An Arizona attorney happened upon the truth in March and filed a suggestion of death on behalf of American Family, complete with a copy of Hernandez’s death certificate. Consequently, AmFam wanted to know how long the client had been dead. However, counsel has referred all questions to the [dead] client.

Here’s an excerpt from the Madison-St.Clair Record:

Millar [Hernandez attorney] has confirmed the death of his client, but he has not answered questions that American Family Insurance submitted about his knowledge of it.

Millar objected to the questions, arguing to [Circut Judge] Stack that American Family Insurance should submit them not to Hernandez’s attorney but to Hernandez himself.

Yeah. I’ll definitely be filing today’s entry under “Peculiar Postings.”

How many times has this happened to you: you go on a sales call and realize you forgot your calculator. Then comes the onslaught of mental math anxiety (MMA).

Say goodbye to MMA forever with this high-tech pen calculator. (Click the link to see a video of the pen in action.)

Okay, probably not the most practical invention ever, but still worth checking out.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

[Hat tip]: TechEBlog

In a recent post on Seeds of Growth, author Dave Free introduced a new form of ADD that seems to be emerging: Customer Attention Deficit Disorder. It seems that customers are no longer paying attention to traditional marketing techniques. Instead, they are paying attention to their friends, family and co-workers. The opinion of people they know carries a lot more weight than the opinion of someone doing the advertising.

Here at InsureMe we have been focusing a great deal of our attention towards our consumers and the experience that they have with us. We want to be remarkable and we want our consumers to share how remarkable we are with others. Viral marketing is becoming more and more important to a company’s success as described in Free’s post, as well as in this post by Megan.

So…what makes you stand out?

[Related Article]:

Successfully Marketing Yourself & Your Business [InsureMe Agent Resource Center]

There’s a great article in the July issue of Health Insurance Underwriter magazine entitled, One Spouse Approved, One Declined–What Can I Do to Save the Case? Because, as author Phillip Sullivan points out, when one spouse is declined for health, life or LTC coverage, the approved spouse tends to refuse the coverage altogether. Sullivan refers to this as “cutting-your-nose-off-to-spite-your-face syndrome”.

Pre-qualifying the sale is paramount to avoiding CYNOTSYF syndrome says Sullivan. (That’s the last time I use that acronym, I swear.) To that end, he recommends making a strong pre-qualifying phone call before heading out on a sales call.

From a time management point of view, I would rather know I have a potential underwriting problem before I arrive than to invest time in an appointment which will not result in a sale.

Thus, in his pre-qualifying call, Sullivan explains that not everyone can get long-term care coverage (for example) because of health reasons. Then he asks the prospects to share any serious illnesses or hospital stays that they’ve experienced in the past five years, followed by a list of medications the pair currently takes. And this, Sullivan enforces, is where you must know the health issues your carrier will not insure.

…Read the rest of this entry »

So, the Insurance Journal is selling its new publication, Insurance Journal’s Top 100 Property-Casualty Agencies for 2006. They’re selling it for $35. They should be selling it for $0.

Now, I’m not some crazy writer person who doesn’t understand that companies need to make money. I don’t write for free (though I’ve been known to barter) and I certainly don’t expect InsureMe to start giving away insurance leads because it’s the nice thing to do.

But we do a lot of stuff for a lot of people we don’t do direct business with. We’ve put together two informational resource centers (one for agents, one for consumers) and three blogs: one for agents, one for consumers and one for affiliates. And there’s absolutely no guarantee that the people who use these free resources will decide to partner with InsureMe.

And we’re cool with that.

Because being giving and forthright with people is one of the many ways we show love to our industry and demonstrate that we’re a great organization to work with. But I digress.

So IJ wants $35 for this publication that ranks independent agencies based on their 2005 volume. And they don’t want you to share it with anyone. Rooted in industry’s truly old-school frame of mind, this publication is “not for multiple distribution.” Talk about taking two steps forward and one step back.

If the insurance industry is going to turn a new page, it will need to recognize the value in sharing information and co-creating with others–maybe even with competitors. (See Laura’s latest post and our Tips for Agents category for more on this.)

Take the Web Marketing Association, for instance. They sponsor an annual Web Award competition and after the winners have been announced, the WMA publishes a list of the winners and their respective web URLs on the WMA site for everyone to see. They understand that learning from each other and gleaning best practices is what it’s all about.

And that’s why, on premise alone, organizations like the WMA get it right…and today, the Insurance Journal is getting it wrong.

[Bonus reading]:

Spark: Be More Innovative Through Co-Creation by John Winsor (Amazon)
John Winsor’s blog

Good news out of the Southeast today: Florida, Mississippi and South Carolina have been named in the top five states for flood insurance growth, according to the NFIP. FloodSmart figures show that 80 percent of flood insurance growth is attributable to these Southeast states.

Insurance commissioner, George Dale is very pleased by the growing numbers and continues to encourage homeowners to purchase the extra coverage:

I am particularly happy to see so many coastal residents taking action now to prepare themselves for the next storm that may threaten our coast and I would encourage those who have not yet purchased flood insurance to please make that very important choice to get flood coverage.

While last year’s active hurricane season more that demonstrated the need for flood insurance along the coast, I think we can also attribute this surge to the numerous insurance agents across the country working to educate clients and prospects about such issues. Well done!

[Source]: Insurance Journal

I know, I know. This is a blog for insurance agents and I probably shouldn’t let the Faceless Realtor Guy get anywhere near our sandbox. But, just for today, I’m going to let him borrow my shovel. Here’s the story:

I was talking to a friend of mine briefly this afternoon and she divulged that she and her husband had just celebrated the first anniversary of their new home. And to help them celebrate, their realtor sent them a gift card to their favorite restaurant.

Now this gesture says three things to me:

1. To remember such a thing, the realtor has got to be pretty organized
2. The realtor invests a good deal of resources into maintaining working business relationships
3. The realtor knew his clients well enough to know where they’d like to eat

Any way you slice it, the guy clearly goes above and beyond for clients. And if I can ever get over my fear of committment enough to buy real estate, I’ll be asking my friend for this guy’s number. And there’s nothing like earning a referral that you didn’t have to ask for!

So here’s to you, Faceless Realtor Guy. Thanks for being our Salesperson of the Day.

What do you do to maintain relationships with your clients? Share your best practices, if you would, via comments.