Daily sales & marketing tips for insurance professionals

Esquire.com has compiled “five insurance ads that make us forget how much we hate AIG.” With reports of swine flu and record levels of public distrust of big business, I figure funny videos are just the ticket for today. Also, it looks like robot insurance isn’t such a crazy idea after all.

Twitter is a web application that let’s people share tiny snippets of information about themselves with friends and family. (Some call it microblogging.)

Twitter’s search engine is particularly fascinating because it lets you take the collective pulse of thousands of people—in real time. So if you ever want to get into the head of the average consumer, just do a Twitter search on “insurance.” You’ll get a ton of results—and they’re fascinating. People have passionate feelings when it comes to insurance. As you might guess, a lot of them are negative. But it’s equally clear that people understand the importance of having adequate coverage.

Anyway, do a search for yourself and see what people talk about when they talk about insurance. (I don’t recommend starting an account unless you’ve got above-average time-management skills. Twitter is famous for its addictive quality.)

I’m not 100% sure about the provenance of this bumper sticker, but I know I like it:

“Please don’t hit me. I’m not 100% sure about my coverage.”

“If I had ankle insurance, maybe my ankles would finally be able to sleep at night.”

At some point or other, we all find ourselves standing next to a screen in front of an audience. Usually—unfortunately—there are bullets involved. And templates. Really ugly templates.

PowerPoint, despite its flaws, is the standard presentation medium. We all moan about it, but we also wouldn’t stand in front of more than six people without its protective cover.

Problem is, every time we advance a slide, we’re actually putting people’s lives in danger. It’s known as death by PowerPoint.

The next time you’re tasked with presenting something—a company report, a sales pitch, a new product, or seminar (see yesterday’s post)—take the time to read Garr Reynolds’ presentation tips. Reynolds—who also authors the blog Presentation Zen—has dedicated his life to reducing PowerPoint-related deaths.

For all his efforts, however, he has yet to make an impact on 90 percent of the presenting public. People are dodging bulleted lists every second: most PowerPoint presentations—and that includes the delivery as well as the actual slides—are, in a word, bloody awful. (Ok, that’s two words.)

But that’s not because people aren’t capable. They are. They’re intelligent. They’re passionate about their material. It’s just that the bar is so low. For most people, it doesn’t even occur to them to put the time into standing in front of the mirror and nailing the delivery, finding awesome images, choosing cool fonts, winnowing slide text from 30 words to six.

We expect PowerPoint to be bad. So we let it be bad.

Don’t let it be bad. Go to Garr’s site. Or watch this presentation:

Worthwhile reads from this week, freshly plucked from my Google Reader:

• Seth Godin on The Thing About Goals
• Ryan Healy on How Laziness Sneaks In
• Jeff Bezos on entrepreneurialism
• Penelope Trunk on why Tim Ferriss’ “4-Hour Workweek” is a scam
• The Kaiser Family Foundation on why health care is still on the agenda despite the dismal economy

Comedian-musician-slacker Chris Hardwick has a great article in this month’s Wired magazine on his “flirtations with the 4-hour work week” and other productivity schemes.

As a freelancer with an internet-age attention span, Hardwick maintains a constant struggle to get stuff done. “My days are like eBay shipments: a few tangible things and a whole lot of packing peanuts,” Hardwick explains. “I obviously need help being the boss of me. So I decided to try an experiment: I’d spend two weeks absorbing, in succession, three well-known productivity systems and see if I could find one that worked for those of us who count income in 1099s instead of W-2s.”

Hardwick chose three popular productivity books: David Allen’s Getting Things Done, Julie Morgenstern’s Never Check E-Mail in the Morning, and Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. His article chronicles his progress under their respective teachings. The result is pretty hilarious, particularly the part when he uses Allen’s GTD method to kill a black widow spider living in his drainpipe.

Our mania for productivity has spawned a major industry, and paradoxically, a great wasting of time, especially for people with easy access to the internet, where getting stuff done is known as “lifehacking.” I know from experience—I’ve spent more time than I like to admit on sites like Lifehacker.com and 43Folders.com.

That is not to say that productivity books and web sites aren’t helpful. You just have to realize that it’s easy to become addicted to the idea of productivity—which is, psychologically, a close relative of the idea of utopia.

Utopias will never exist (at least not temporal ones). Nor will total productivity. By all means, read books and try to create more free time for yourself. Most of us could trim some fat from our days. But know when to give up on the idea of total efficiently—chasing after that ideal will only make you really, really, inefficient.

My questions for you:

Q. Do you think the bailout plan, which just cleared the House, will have any positive effect on the economy? The credit crunch? The mortgage crisis? Are there any other plans that you think would or would have worked better? (Here is former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s plan, here’s billionaire George Soros‘, and here is Edmund Phelps‘ plan (2006 Nobel Prize winner.)

Q. Who or what is to blame for our current economic woes? Do you agree with Gov. Palin, who in last night’s debate blamed “predatory lenders” for causing the crisis?

Q. What do you make of the rather bizarre Microsoft ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld? Brilliant or bonkers?

Leave a comment with your impressions below.

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

I would maintain that not only does this list apply to both gentlemen and gentlewomen, it has extreme applicability to the field of insurance sales.

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.

It is Friday afternoon in the middle of summer. In my mind, the very best time of the year (maybe second to the summer equinox). We are still weeks away from too much campaigning mania and the kids are not in school. I keep thinking about Tony Snow saying “… concentrate on living.” That is very good advice. So grab this time and live it.

When I started my career, there was a great manager at IBM that would go around on Friday afternoons and check on his entire team. If they weren’t working on an immediate deadline, he’d tell them to knock off early and enjoy the day. He wasn’t my manager but I heard about it.

Which brings up my final ‘affirmation comment’ for this Friday. From research, we know that doing someone a favor not only makes the person being helped feel better, but also the person doing the good deed has more endorphins moving around too. More than that, if a 3rd party observes the good deed, that person ALSO has the benefit of feeling better, just by seeing the kindly action.

So, if you are a manager, help your team leave early. Many people will benefit from that act, including you.