This is an issue I have been sensing for quite sometime, especially as a 2nd Generation Insurance Broker who was force fed the mantra of the good old days … “Just Get Out There and Walk Into Businesses”.

Yes, action is critical, massive action is paramount for some.  The fact is now you can no longer – as in the old days  – merely Hang Your Shingle Out There and survive on sheer persistence.  You have to work both Hard and Smart in this economy and IMHO for the last several years.

The Insurance agency model has become much more complex.  Demanding volume commitments to obtain and maintain quality carriers [ for us Independent agents ], Loss Ratio requirements, and now more than ever the tremendous expense of Insurance Specific Technology and Training.

I feel the complexity of owning and running a small to mid-size agency has exponentially increased in the 24 years I’ve been involved in the industry. Staggering really, when I reflect back on our first FAX machine   Our first IBM PC with dual 5.25″ floppy drives.  WOW!

Tying in the timely piece below from Brian Tracy … We can No Longer as agents, expect to remain viable with the age old activities of sending our clients a bill at their annual renewal, and hope to survive.  Excellent service is the expected Norm.  Lightning speed and turnaround, and instant gratification are as well.

With the difficulty we go through just to obtain clients, shouldn’t we do everything we can to RETAIN them?

Is your retention strategy a nice smile, a few kind words, and a billing statement at renewal? If so, you better re-think that strategy, else your carrier field rep might be on his way with a form for you to sign … that you acknowledge you’re being terminated.

Develop a plan and a strategy today! I encourage you to consider the one I deployed.  One that is turnkey, cost effective and can start having an immediate positive impact. The Ultimate Retention and Referral System.

Take Action – Implement!

I wish you all the best,

The Complex Sale Today

By: Brian Tracy

The Sale is More Complex Today

The entire process of selling today is more complex than it has ever been before. It used to be that we would make a single call on a single buyer who would make a single decision on our product or offering. In this simple form of selling, we used the attention/interest/ desire/action (AIDA) model of sales presentation and focused intensely on numerous different ways of closing the sale. Then, once we had made the sale, in many cases we never saw the customer again.

Everything Has Changed

Today, however, everything is different. Today we must make multiple calls, an average of five or six, in order to make the sale. We deal with multiple decision makers in an organization, each of whom can influence the purchase. Much of the sale takes place when we are not present. Sometimes we never even meet the final decision maker who signs the check. And it is not unusual for a sale to be derailed at the last minute by something completely unexpected.

The Competition is Fierce

If that weren’t enough, there is more competition than ever before and it is more determined and resolute than it has ever been in the past. Not only must we compete on the basis of price, quality, services, capabilities, financing and warranties with many other vendors of our product or service, but we must also compete with every other vendor of every other product or service who is striving to get the same customer dollar that we are after. Our competitors are extremely determined, driven the same as we are by tight markets and careful customers. They are committed to starting earlier, working harder, and staying up later thinking of ways to take our customers away from us.

Customers Are Overwhelmed

Our prospective customers are beset on all sides by every conceivable sales offering. Because they are drowning in details, options and choices, they are in no hurry to make up their minds. With markets changing and contracting, the amount of discretionary funds they have available has shrunken and they are more careful today than they have ever had to be in the past.

The Key to Profitability

The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. If a business does this in sufficient quantity and with proper cost controls, it will make a profit. The profit is the result of creating and keeping customers efficiently.

Create and Keep Customers

As the president of your own professional sales corporation, your job is to create and keep customers as well. And just as a company must continually restructure and redesign its product and service offerings to satisfy the changing tastes of a demanding and competitive customer marketplace, you as a salesperson must constantly upgrade the quality and sophistication of your sales procedures and approaches if you are going to create customers in sufficient quantity.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action. First, be prepared to make multiple calls on a customer to close a large or complex sale. Plan your sales work systematically so you always have a new reason for calling back. Second, think continually about how you have to change and improve your selling and your offering if you want to succeed in a tough market. Work on yourself every day and never stop getting better.

Brought to you by World Class Sales Trainer - Brian Tracy |  http://www.briantracy.com

From Steve

As you go through the hints and tips all the “gurus” provide – there’s a common underlying theme,  appreciation [see item #4 below] .. but How exactly?

What shall I send, when?

Wow.. this is time consuming to keep track of !

Well, the Ultimate Referral Marketing System has helped me tremendously in solving these issues.  If you want to be able to actually IMPLEMENT the following referral generating strategies – you’re going to need a system!

Good luck all and enjoy these ideas from Evan Carmichael

Youngentrepreneur.com presents …

Growing a business through referrals can be one of the most effective strategies an entrepreneur can embark on. Referred clients are more loyal, buy in greater quantities, buy more frequently, are less price sensitive and cost less to acquire than clients who come through traditional advertising / marketing avenues.

So how do you go about getting more referrals for your business? Here are five quick tips you can follow.

1) Just ask. Most entrepreneurs don’t get more referrals because they don’t bother asking for them. You would be surprised at how frequently an existing client would be willing to give you a referral but they don’t because they either a) don’t know you are looking for more business or b) don’t think about it because they have so much happening already in their lives. Simply by asking for referrals you will dramatically increase the amount of new business from word of mouth connections.

2) Wait for the thank you. When is the right time to ask for a referral? I prefer to wait until a client has had a positive experience with me and thinks highly of my business. What I wait to hear is the words ‘thank you’ come from them. If you have gone beyond the call of duty to help them and they have expressed their gratitude, now is the perfect time to ask them for a referral. They recognize your value, are in a positive frame of mind, and are likely to help return the favor you have just given them if they can. Try to train your mind so that when you hear the words “thank you”, you ask for a referral.

3) Become and introducer. Always try to think outside the box for your clients and help them in ways they don’t expect. I make introductions for them to other people I know who can help them. When reporters contact me for stories I try to involve my clients as well. If I spot an article or read a book I think might help my clients I’ll save it for them and gift it to them the next time we meet. I am always looking for ways to help my clients because by becoming an introducer you are more likely go get more of those ‘thank you’ moments. If you help a client land new business, for example, through one of your introductions, they are likely to thank you for your efforts which brings up a perfect opportunity to ask for a referral.

4) Recognize their efforts. Another important factor is to recognize the people who have given you referrals. This can be in the form of a specific contribution (a percentage of the sale for introducing a new client), but the people I work with typically don’t like to feel like they are being paid to sell their friends. They prefer to feel like they are helping their colleagues as well as helping me. So how do you recognize them? What I do is every quarter assign a certain % of my revenues towards thanking the people who have helped me with my business in the past quarter. I use the money to buy them gift certificates of various kinds and write a handwritten message with each reward. They always enjoy receiving the gifts and it’s another way to encourage them to send you even more referrals. (Note: I also do this for the people who I employ.)

5) Stay Top of Mind. This final element is important for every business owner to follow. If you want people to refer you to their friends they need to be thinking about you. To get them to think about you, you have to find ways to stay top of mind. If a client hasn’t heard from you in a couple of months it’s unlikely that they will have you at the front of their mind – they have busy enough lives to live without having to worry about you. Find ways to keep in touch. You can use a newsletter, host events, call to catch up, suggest a lunch, invite them to a party you are going to, send them information you have found valuable recently. The goal is not to sell them but just to remind them that you are there and that you value the relationship with them.

Referrals are not as scary as you might think. Get into the habit of following these five strategies and you will have new business being sent to you in no time!

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

See this article here: http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/blog/2007/09/12/how-to-get-more-referrals/

By Seth Godin

Shared by Steve
John Assaraf’s blog is pretty nifty stuff. Here’s a post I came across of his that’s very timely.

There’s just a never ending blitz of data coming at business owners daily about ONLINE MARKETING – especially about SEO [Search Engine Optimization] tactics.

This was just a refreshing piece that I enjoyed, and illustrates one of the benefits of using a tool like the Ultimate Referral Marketing System.  Online technology for Offline Relationship marketing.

The Business Insights Blog from OneCoach – 14th Edition

The world of the Web is truly amazing, but let’s not forget about the offline world.

It’s easy to get sucked into Web traffic solutions and search engine optimization, but there’s still a massive audience, if not bigger, who’s not on the Web, with deep pockets, who might want your product. Don’t cut yourself off from that offline world, because it holds opportunities to enlarge your power and extend your reach.

Direct mail is still possibly the most powerful and persuasive way of doing business no matter who you are. The most obvious obstacle with direct mail is the cost. But if you implement a piece that really penetrates your market, then the results can be very lucrative. In order to create that stellar piece, you’ve got to conduct testing to find out which one of your sales letters is actually going to work. Because of the potential high cost for such a campaign, you must test before you dive in.

In addition, your direct mail piece doesn’t need to be a postal-size Rembrandt – you don’t need stunning imagery or a big sales letter or brochure. A simple postcard can be very effective; it gets read by everyone including the mail person delivering it. A specific type of postcard marketing involves a two-step approach by putting a teaser on the card which is answered on your Web site (getting your message out there and increasing site traffic).

With this two-step approach, you can ask a question that the recipient can only answer by visiting your Web site or going to your directed resource. This is an example of hypnotic marketing. It’s also the perfect situation for presenting a hook to get them to visit and read your longer sales copy.

You may want to do a little market research to find out the average number of direct mail pieces that people receive in your target area. Some regions are so flooded with direct mail that people aren’t even scanning or glancing at these piles but sending them directly to the trash. When you really need to stretch your marketing bucks, it’s smart to look at areas of low competition first. This is also an opportunity to take on college marketing interns to personally deliver your direct mail pieces right into the hands of your ideal clients, such as managers versus administrative assistants.

All in all, you can look at your marketing campaign as a fishing boat. Each marketing element – newsletters, news releases, radio spots – can be considered a line in the water. And with every additional line in the water, you increase your chances of catching a big one.
Next in this series: How much time to spend on marketing.

This post is the sixth in a series of excerpts from OneCoach CEO John Assaraf’s interview with copywriter Joe Vitale, author of The Attractor Factor and Life Missing Instruction Manual, The Guidebook You Didn’t Get at Birth. For more information about Joe Vitale, visit his site atwww.mrfire.com.

Shared by Steve
Hi everyone … another interesting FEED post by Seth Godin. I wanted to share this short note with you because – like he points out, I’ve lost a favorite little store or vendor I really liked.

Now I miss them a great deal. What did I do to spread the word about them? Rarely anything. Shame on me.

Imagine if ALL you clients somehow got the point that “My Agent – who has been there for me since I was on my parent auto policy, or since I was the beneficiary of my Father’s Will etc … and they might not be there next year.”

So as creative Referral Marketers, how do we utilize what we’re going to read below to gently inform our clientele of this, and spin a marketing opportunity out of the concept?

What if we were to more frequently add P.S. messages or closing sentences to correspondence with something like … “It is through your generous referrals and trust that our business thrives through the most challenging of times.

Please don’t keep Us/Me a Secret …

We appreciate the trust, confidence and loyalty you’ve shown our firm over the years. We will strive to continually earn and keep it, and that of the friends, family and associates your refer to us!”

A little wordy … and a bit over the top – but it was for emphasis and idea. You get the point.

I like to put a little something heart felt and impactful from time to into to some of the drip campaigns I’m using with the Ultimate Referral System.

Enjoy …

IWantSandyis folding, as are a number of web companies. So is that restaurant you loved down the street. Users are outraged. Outraged!

When you find a service or establishment or product that gives you joy, it’s tempting to keep it to yourself. Perhaps it’s uncomfortable to recommend it to a friend (after all, you might seem silly) and even more uncomfortable to recommend it to a stranger (after all, you might seem like a shill).

Plenty of people hesitate before spreading the word about a political candidate or a business or amedical device. We’re worried that we’ll look silly, or that the place will end up being too crowded and now we won’t be able to get in. Or perhaps we’re concerned about losing our uniqueness…

Anyway, the outcry that accompanies the closing of one of these businesses should be enough to remind you that your hesitation has a cost.

It’s simple, I think. In a world where consumers have so much power, we now have two responsibilities:

• If you don’t like what an organization stands for, work actively to spread the word and force them to change

and

• If you will miss a product, a service, a book, a site or a professional when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them masses of new business.

We get what we promote.

Venture Beat:

Everyone loves talking about Twitter’s business model — because there isn’t one yet, and they’ll keep talking about it until there is one.

But it’s becoming more clear that while a business model is of course important, Twitter is perhaps the perfect example of a company that can afford to take its time in finding the one that is perfect for it.

That’s because other businesses are building so much on top of the micro-messaging service and using it for their own services.

Less altruistically, some businesses have discovered that Twitter is an effective way of communicating with consumers.

Dell says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store. They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.

Photo byTwitter.

One of the tools that took Facebook into the stratosphere … virology, appears to be at play here for Twitter, users, followers, tweets .. whatever

Word of Mouth Viral marketing circa 2008 … Tweet Tweet!

Check out the last sentence of this interesting blog post. Then, checkout how you can use it similar web 2.0 technology on your site[s] …

Go Viral Young Broker, Go Viral <– click and check out how these guys create a Viral Tidal Wave …

Enjoy,

Yes, I know I’m way late to the blog party that is 2008 – LOL … but I’m trying to get up to speed here.  I’ve burned my first feed over at Feedburner  DOT com for The Insurance Referral Marketing blog and subscribed myself via email.  You might try it out as well, upper right hand corner of the Home Page of this site.

Apparently what this technology [Feedburner] does, is allow you blog posts to be rapidly syndicated through a fantastic sounding system – via email or through various FREE readers like Google Reader.  It gets pumped out all over the globe as a FEED people can subscribe to.

This TECH sounds like a great way to get clients and prospects on a “list”,  not to bury them with marketing junk per se, but to be able to easily, and cost effectively blast out a message of value … like say an update to the CA Ins Commissioners WC Rate filing approvals?  Or some tips on safeguarding your home for the rainy season – Drains and Raingutters – and a local cleaning service providers link   News about a new Identity Theft Scam that’s going around – or similar value added message.

Looking forward to see how this feed comes through the system.

To a successful 2009,

Steve