This Friday blog is a bit late. I actually thought the weekend economic and political events might change the world dramatically, but alas and alack, they didn’t. We are on the same course we have been for about 2 weeks, uncertain but holding steady. At least we have a rescue bill agreed to on Capitol Hill.

Given that the world didn’t change all that much, in this blog, I’d like to highlight an inspiring lecture I attended by Joe Plumeri, Chairman and CEO of the Willis Group, a global insurance company, headquartered in London. Mr. Plumeri spoke at the eInsurance symposium recently in Dallas. Willis is recognized as a leading global insurance broker, handling risk management and reinsurance across a wide range of service areas and industries. But what was inspiring was the energy and dedication to the customer that Plumeri exuded.

The conference was held the infamous week of September 15th, so there were many economic distractions, especially as issues like AIG’s emerged. Plumeri addressed the economic and industry issues directly. He said, in times like these, companies start to do desperate things. Selling goes out the window and businesses start dropping prices. Selling skills die and what you are selling becomes a commodity. He said that price can become an issue because there is no innovation.

He said self esteem is low in the insurance business right now. He really thinks we should be proud. He said look around you, look out the window; everything you see is insured! That is our business and it is a great one. He said on September 11th, the US was attacked, but not the insurance business. The destroyed buildings were insured and the owners reimbursed.

Then he urged us to provide a ‘Value Gap’. Value is the gap between what clients can do for themselves and what you can do for them. And the value gap (the size of it) determines how much you can charge for your product.

So think about what you can do for the customer, that they can’t do themselves, or that they don’t want to do themselves. Plumeri said it isn’t enough to just get insurance for your customers, or even to make sure they get paid, it is to make sure they are covered correctly and that they get paid quickly.

It just doesn’t sound the same in a blog, but he was so inspiring to listen to, we were all ready to jump out of our seats and go take care of our customers.

Posted by Lori Reed at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
 

Recently, popular blogger Seth Godin observed that people pay a high premium simply to be treated nicely.

They will pay an extra $1000 for a nice flight attendant. They’ll shell out for the presidential suite in hopes that they will be treated with kindness by the front desk clerk.

Sure, those people might tell you they’re paying for extra leg room and 1000-thread-count sheets, but those things wouldn’t matter a whit if they came with the same service that comes with coach and the Motel 6.

People pay extra to be treated with dignity and respect. It’s the nice premium.

“I think there's a huge gap between what people are willing to pay for nice (a lot) and what it would cost businesses to deliver it (almost nothing),” writes Godin. “Smells like an opportunity.”

It is. If you can be the agent or agency that delivers nice free of charge, you’ll find yourself with a lot of pleasantly surprised people, and they will return your kindness with gratitude and, best of all, positive word of mouth.

Posted by Jeb Foster at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
 

After attending the eInsurance Symposium last week, my head is swirling with so many insurance marketing items to discuss. However, for the time being, everything we learned has been heavily colored by the extreme economic news during last week. So, I think we should stick with topics around bailing out large companies and how this will affect the insurance industry.

AIG has a checkered past with not being straight with their balance sheet and financial disclosures. Why would we be surprised now that the shenanigans of Greenberg are still in play? I do not feel any sympathy for any of the decision makers involved with the risky loan guarantees and the attraction of easy money. I certainly want them to feel the same pain the line and staff ex-employees of Lehman Brothers are feeling. However, according to the Insurance Journal, the concern about AIG is already affecting their personal lines of insurance, and I don’t want AIG insurance agents to feel any pain.

But those emotions have nothing to do with rational thinking about what would happen if AIG fell apart. And all the other institutions that Treasurer Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke want to rescue. An unchecked crisis of confidence, well deserved and all, would crater our economy and you and I would suffer most. So, you and I have to watch the lesser of 2 evils – avoid a depression like the 30’s, or pay incredible taxes and incur a huge federal debt to keep the economy from totally tanking.

I would like it best if we severely punished those high stakes rollers who bought and sold bad debt with abandonment. But it is more important to me that Congress act more like Nike and just do it. Set up an organization to start bailing out those bad debts that are ubiquitous through-out the country and economy.

Paulson and Bernanke have the most information at hand, are very capable thinkers, and have the responsibility to fix this. You and I will suffer, but probably suffer less than the alternative.

If you haven’t voted on our AIG poll, please do so! And hopefully, things will quiet down and we can start focusing on insurance marketing.

Posted by Lori Reed at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
 

Posted by Jeb Foster at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
 

"I think AIG has a day," New York Governor David Patterson told CNBC this morning. "I don't know if anyone is really understanding the ramifications of this crisis. We're in a terrible situation if we let the world's largest industrial and technical insurance company go down."

UPDATE: the Wall Street Journal gives some helpful context to the AIG crisis:

The company is such a big player in insuring risk for institutions around the world that its failure could shake the global financial system. [Emphasis added]

UPDATE 2: From yesterday's Times: “We have a very strong message for consumers,” said David Neustadt, the deputy superintendent for public information for the State Insurance Department in New York, where A.I.G. has its headquarters. “If you have a policy with A.I.G. insurance company, they are financially strong and solvent. They have the capability to pay on any claims, and our job is to ensure that they continue to have the ability to pay.”

UPDATE 3: Understated headline of the day: "A Sense That Wall St.’s Boom Times Are Over". No kidding.

Posted by Jeb Foster at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
 

First, a definition:

meme: n. an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture. [Source]

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, advocate the use of memes in marketing. In their book, they quote biologist Richard Dawkins, who popularized the word:

“Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashion, ways of making pots or of building arches,” Dawkins wrote in his book The Selfish Gene. “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”

Huba and McConnell translate Dawkin’s definition: “Memes communicate a complete idea simply and compactly … examples of memes from various industries are Got Milk?; America Online; NBC—Must See TV; and Intel Inside.” (Their examples are a bit dated, but you get the idea.)

But a meme is not merely a tagline: “A meme for your company’s products and services helps customer evangelists tell your story more succinctly,” write Huba and McConnell. “With a few words neatly arranged in a phrase that rolls of the tongue, a meme will be transmitted from person to person like a handshake.”

Granted, behemoths like NBC and Intel have huge advertising budgets that make it easier to spread their memes, but the success of a meme has more to do with its pithiness and stickiness than the dollars behind it. (A lot of big companies have dropped big money into failed memes.)

Also, creating a meme serves an important organizational purpose because it forces you to distill exactly what it is you’re offering to your customers, and the sooner you have a clear idea of that, the sooner you’ll be able to deliver it. Is it the best policy? The best service? Expediency?

In thinking about memes, I’m reminded of a post Seth Godin wrote a few months ago entitled “Start with a classified”:

Copy gets in the way.

Actually, thinking about copy gets in the way. You start writing and then you patch and layer and write and dissemble and defend and write and the next thing you know, you've killed it.

So, try this instead:

Write a classified ad.

Posted by Jeb Foster at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
 

“Marketing is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.”

Don’t get me wrong—there is a place for marketing. But this quote serves as a reminder that the remarkable don’t need to spend as much time tooting their own horn as the rest of us do. Their clients, customers, coworkers, friends and family members do it for them. The remarkable pay a much smaller “marketing tax.”

Of course, many have crunched the numbers and decided that they’d rather pay the marketing tax than do what it takes to be remarkable. That may, in fact, be the easier route. But it won't be a decision you'll look back on with a lot of pride.

Food for thought.

* Unfortunately, the source of this quote is unknown. I came across it today on 43 Folders.

Posted by Jeb Foster at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
 

Deadlines are a bad idea because they are intended to coerce, and coercion has no place in today’s sales climate.

From my recent article, published in the Agent Resource Center, entitled "Why Deadlines Are a Bad Idea."

Check it out.

Posted by Jeb Foster at 03:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
 

According to Confucius, a gentleman has nine aspirations:

1. To see clearly
2. To understand what he hears
3. To be warm in manner
4. To be dignified in bearing
5. To be faithful of speech
6. To be painstaking at work
7. To ask when in doubt
8. In anger to think of difficulties
9. In sight of gain to remember right

Which brings up a larger point: most (if not all) of what it takes to be a good person translates into what it takes to be a successful insurance agent. Success doesn’t require knowing secret closing tactics or engaging in the latest marketing gimmickry.

I’d also add that 90 percent of the tips posted on this blog fall under at least one of Confucius’ nine directives listed here, particularly items 3-6.

Anyway, just some philosophical grist for your Monday.

Posted by Jeb Foster at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
 

Dear loyal Agent Blog readers:

All I’ve got for today is another nano-post, and it will be the last until next week. In the meantime, dig into the archives, check out some articles over at the resource center, or shoot me an email with a blog post idea.

But before I sign off, I’d like to share a great story, one that I meant to include in yesterday's entry. Everything you need to know about persuasiveness you can learn by reading this guy’s tale of how he ended up buying a rug (even though he didn’t need one) on his first day visiting Turkey.

Hat tip: Guy Kawasaki

P.S. We're currently working on a blog redesign. Exciting times!

Posted by Jeb Foster at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
 

I hope your Labor Day weekend wasn't too labor-intensive.

I don't have time for a long post today, but I thought I'd offer a link to a book that Guy Kawasaki has been praising of late. It's called Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.

Looks like required reading for insurance agents.

Posted by Jeb Foster at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)