from the Desk of Joe Rohan
It's Time For March Madness!
Who's your Pick?
Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 3:00 PM - Guest Columnist - Stephan Moore
Duke? UNC? Kentucky? Indiana? Miami? No matter who you choose, none of them can compete with us in appointment setting! Whether it's for commercial lines insurance sales, workman's comp, or for medical malpractice, we give you the assist to close the sale. The competition only turns it over!
From Coast-to-coast presentations to concise coaching on reaching your target market, we have you covered like a full court press when it comes to appointment setting.
Our strength is in our commitment to our clients who wind up being our biggest fans after we consistently close with a game-winning presentation that scores an appointment for them. Whether Property and Casualty or General Liability, we have the skills to ensure results. And the competition does not.
Visit our website and listen to our highlight reel, which we send as proof after each appointment we set. Want to know why? Because we KNOW a victory when we hear it. Our competition simply isn't that confident.
You've seen the amateurs. Step into the big dance with us. I guarantee we'll be the one's holding the trophy!
It’s That Time of Year, Awards Season
Who would you vote for?
Thursday, February 7, 2013, 9:30 AM – Guest Columnist Guy Pidkameny
Oscar, Grammy, Tony, Emmy, Golden Globe, and many others have been awarded, or soon will be.
Who are the nominees and winners at Insurance Marketing Pros?
Best Tele-Prospector:
Nominee Phil Andrews, for appointments with Medical Practices in the North East for Professional Liability Insurance.
Nominee Stephan Moore, for appointments setting with Construction Companies in Mid-Atlantic States for Workers Comp.
Nominee Frank Gates, for Lead Generation with Auto Dealers in New England for Garage Liability.
Bill Palmer, for appointments with Non-Profits in Texas for General Liability.
And the award goes to John Russo, for appointments with Manufacturers with 50 to 250 employees in Florida.
Best Client:
Honorary award, the client name is withheld to protect the innocent. This client is more like a partner. What is great about this client? They:
Identify their targets: desired industry, size, and geography.
Monitor, review, and give positive feedback to the audio recordings.
Clearly define their goals and expectations.
Best Book about Appointment Setting:
“Cold Calling for Women: Opening Doors and Closing Sales” by Wendy Weiss. Don’t be fooled by the title, this book is for anyone who wants learn how to use the phone to make appointments. Wendy is not a cheerleader; she tells exactly how to use the phone to make appointments.
Best Book to Refocus Your Head:
“Who Moved My Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard. Really just a short story, but it changed my life. The New York Times had to rewrite their rules defining best sellers because this book was on the list so long.
Favorite All Around Quote:
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right” by Henry Ford.
What are your favorite quotes for the Property and Casualty Market?
Owen Kelly and “Horse Sense for Insurance Markets 2013”
OK?
Friday, November 09, 2012, 8:12 AM – There is little doubt now that both the Commercial Lines and Employee Benefits markets will offer the best business development opportunity coupled with the first real threat to retention of such business in nearly a decade.
Nightmares of the soft Commercial Isurance market, the undefined Employee Benefits market are coupled with producer’s nightmarish experience with telemarketers!
Universal experience with one exception with insurance telemarketers is “quality does not exist.” Enter Owen Kelly.
Owen doesn’t work for us, he worked for a guy named Henry Ford. Henry, being something of a “nut’ thought that he had invented something to replace horses for transportation. Trouble was that he was “rightfully” at that time widely perceived as a total nut and the whole world waited for the first car off his assembly line to fall apart in short order.
A young, recently arrived Irishman, Owen Kelly, was hired to assure that never happened. Owen crawled all over each car inspecting it. If it was okay, he would initial the work order “OK”. Owen Kelly.
InsuranceMarketingPros.com allows you to “crawl all over” each and every Commercial Lines, Employee Benefit or Professional Liability insurance appointment we write, this by listening to our exclusive digital recording provided with each appointment we book for your producers.
OK, what are you waiting for? Call Joe Rohan at 516 997-2010 now, before your competitors do. OK?
Hardening Comm Market / Better Defined Employee Benefits Market / Poor Economy
Independent insurance brokers are universally looking forward to not only a New Year, but also two encouraging developments.
Friday, October 12, 2012, 5:58 AM - They are the hardening commercial lines insurance market and better defined employee benefits environment.
As far as commercial lines insurance is concerned, the insurance industry media are universally reporting a true rarity. A hardening, if not , an actual hard market in a poor economy. The perfect prescription for new business development and a threat to retention not seen for nearly a decade.
CFOs and Human Resource Directors, during 2013 will be operating in a better, if not clearly defined environment with the Supreme Court having ruled and the Presidential election decided. These decision makers will now be seeking more clearly defined options for the first time since the enactment of ObamaCare.
While “13” is universally considered an unlucky number, 2013 will be a very “lucky” year for those insurance professionals in commercial lines insurance and employee benefits that do not depend on “luck,” but instead on InsuranceMarketingPros.
As changes that some brokers thought would never come about, actually come about, something else has changed as dramatically.
Telemarketing, a tool that has been largely abandoned because of both the inability of telemarketers to understand what an actual viable sales opportunity consists of and therefore their inability to deliver such opportunities.
2013 will belong to those insurance producers that get ahead of the emerging markets. Commercial Lines, Employee Benefits and cross selling enhanced by a new telemarketing methodology that has remedied each and every past problem you have experienced.
Don’t believe it? Fortunately for us your competitors, after speaking with us will. We do not engage in conflicts of interest, perhaps you should pick up the phone or send us an email. If not, good luck in 2013! It won’t hurt to talk.
Professional “Professional Liability” Sales Opportunity Provider
Now’s the Time
Monday, July 30, 2012, 5:58 AM - Stop! That was the direct order given one of our competitors by a major broker specializing in Professional Liability coverage.
They had been tasked with doing Professional Liability telemarketing for producers to present a medical professional liability program on behalf of a risk retention group.
As they related to us, after having successfully completed our “Show Me” Medical Professional Liability program, our competitor had made such a poor representation of their agency, they agreed to allow our competitor to keep the monies paid them as long as they stop making calls using the agency’s name and agreed to sign a legal stipulation to that effect.
Having personally served as Confidential Officer to a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, upon my discharge from the Army, I acquired a practical, working knowledge of the legal profession.
As good fortune would have it the Judge was also a member of the board of trustee at Long Island Jewish Hospital and his son a physician. I was driving the Judge into New York City when I first heard the term “HMO.” Needless to say that was long ago.
A physician must first agree “to do no harm”. Telemarketers need be held to at least this standard. If they actually want to get paid they should “do something productive”.
Our exclusive digital recording feature allows you to know that your agency is being properly represented to the target group you are telemarketing to, importantly on the first call and every telephone call thereafter.
Although the digital recordings were first used to assure viability of our Professional Liability appointments, an important secondary by product was soon realized. As we begin our Professional Liability telemarketing, importantly, before we write your first Professional Liability sales appointment, you will be provided a recording of our first conversations with your prospects.
This satisfies two very important requirements that you should demand of your Professional Liability telemarketing company before they hear the first dial tone allowing them to make their first telemarketing call to the Professional Liability groups you are targeting.
First, you know we are making a proper representation of your firm as we begin the telemarketing process.
Secondly, as the Professional Liability telemarketing activity progresses, you will hear reactions from the prospects. Professional Liability prospects often do not react in the anticipated manner either the broker or the Professional Liability telemarketing company anticipates. This allows us to fine tune our Professional Liability telemarketing activity, improving our approach to targeted professionals, to accommodate changes each professional is facing.
This is a special improvement in the uncharted waters involving medical Professional Liability and telemarketing activity directed there.
After a quarter of a century of insurance telemarketing experience Insurance Marketing Pros regards telemarketing to the Fortune 500 for commercial lines brokers and Professional Liability Risks to be the Super Bowl for Professional Liability and commercial lines telemarketing companies. Call us, we’ll show you our rings!
Mid Sales Year - 2012
Perfect Storm for Commercial Lines, Employee Benefits, and Cross Selling!
Tuesday, July 10, 2012, 9:14 AM - Politicians with their own agendas will debate global warming, as the wildfires rage and the nation swelters in record heat, groping around in the dark as the result of wide spread power outages.
Insurance producers, having a common agenda and having been forced to grope around in the dark for new business development for Commercial Lines insurance and Employee Benefits insurance coverage, see a blinding light at the end of the tunnel, finally!
The first to regain their vision will dominate both markets for the foreseeable future.
Commercial Lines insurance opportunities are created each day as incumbent brokers likely to have failed to give their insureds a “heads up” on the market are being regarded as “Benedict Arnolds” for failing to come in with what the insured had expected as an automatic annual rate reduction, as has happened every year since 2003. “Now that business and the economy is so bad, you hit me with a rate increase?”
Although these Commercial Lines insurance opportunities are warmly embraced universally by brokers the “lock” on their renewals, the only good part of the soft market, no longer exists. For the first time in nearly a decade, their Commercial Lines book of business is endangered..
The Employee Benefits insurance market storm is like a hurricane compared to the slower moving Commercial Lines tropical storm
With Chief Justice Roberts’ action the massive confusion regarding the complexity of this market, although continuing, finally allows decision makers a context to finally deal with the constantly rising rates and newly imposed governmental requirements. Even the most knowledgeable incumbent broker’s understanding of this un-understandable market invites a second and third opinion
Understand this : “ Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” John F. Kennedy
Additionally understand this: past failures with providers of insurance sales appointments for Commercial Lines insurance or Employee Benefits have been remedied.
As Kennedy’s pledge to put a man on the moon was kept many years ago, our digital recordings and documented results, will put your producers in front of solely viable decision makers.
If you believe they put a man on the moon you should also believe that a commercial lines or employee benefits producer will be put in front of prospects you want and insureds you want to keep by Insurance Marketing Pros. The only remaining question is whether it will be you or your competitors.
Their colleagues, in very short order, will be in to sell them the other form of coverage. A radical concept, this is called cross selling. It’s not illegal or even unconstitutional. That decision would be upheld 9-0.
Commercial Lines: “You’ve Got to Believe It’s Getting Better”
Carriers Say "It’s Getting Better All the Time”
Friday, May 11, 2012, 5:52 AM – Carriers are positioning themselves to take full advantage of the emerging commercial lines market. Brokers that are “in the know” are presently positioning themselves to take full advantage of newly available co-op marketing money for commercial lines and employee benefits telemarketing.
After nearly a decade of the shared opinion, “what’s the use?” about commercial lines new business development in general, and commercial lines telemarketing in particular, both your carriers and competitors are on the move.
With your carriers wanting to give you money for commercial lines telemarketing activity, and all of the problems associated with commercial lines telemarketing experienced in the past – remedied by our digital recordings, by the way – your competitors are delighting in your inaction.
Call your company people. They have newly available funds, and newly cultivated appetites. InsuranceMarketingPros.com will partner with brokers using co-op money providing additional incentives to brokers using carrier co-op funds.
Your carriers are newly willing to help you. InsuranceMarketingPros.com has been here for a quarter of a century to help you. Are you willing to help yourself?
As the Commercial Lines Insurance Market Continues to Repair Itself
A Tool to “Fine Tune” Business Development has also Repaired Itself
Friday, May 04, 2012, 5:59 AM – If, like me, you get the daily electronic transmission from The Insurance Journal, The National Underwriter and all the rest, you know the commercial lines market is repairing itself on a daily basis.
After nearly a decade it’s time to “fine tune” your organization’s sales engine. Commercial lines insurance telemarketing is a tool that has been abandoned after repeated failure.
Like any tool, commercial lines insurance telemarketing, in the wrong hands can actually be dangerous. If you hire a computer “professional” to fix your CPU and they don’t know what a Central Processing Unit is, any tool can’t do them any good. They would be considered to be dangerous around your computer.
A lot of commercial lines insurance telemarketing “professionals” have no concept of what a “viable” commercial lines insurance telemarketing appointment consists of. When you don’t know what something is, you cannot produce it.
The solution? Since you know the difference between a waste of your time and a viable commercial lines sales telemarketing appointment is, listen to the conversation leading up to each appointment on your PC prior to getting in your car to drive to each appointment.
- Hear the prospect acknowledge they are the decision maker or describe their role in the decision making process.
- Hear the prospect schedule the appointment.
- Hear that from the tone and content of the conversation that the prospect fully understands the purpose of the meeting and was not pressured into agreeing to the meeting.
- Hear your telemarketing representative seek out any existing “pain,” besides rates, the prospect has experienced with their brokers and carriers.
“Our secret for success is not keeping secrets from our clients”
Lesson learned today: commercial lines insurance telemarketing will work, using InsuranceMarketingPros.com. Class dismissed. Go out there and write business!
"Watch Out for What You Wished For"
Restored Commercial Lines Reality
Friday, April 13, 2012, 6:11 AM - It looked very much the same as usual in Times Square at midnight as 2012 arrived. Although as a class of people commercial lines insurance sales professionals were less likely to be wearing funny hats and "2012" funny eyeglasses, they had more to celebrate than those so attired!
The almost decade old soft commercial lines insurance super soft market was finally coming to an end!
Now what? The commercial lines insurance sales professionals that were already on the phone with InsuranceMarketingPros.com!
Realizing that now, although new commercial lines insurance business development was again possible, without the "annual automatic rate reduction" their "lock" on renewals was compromised.
Now what, once again! How to get in front of qualified commercial lines decision makers? Those with a good memory remembered when insurance telemarketing companies seemed like a good idea, until they hired commercial lines insurance telemarketing companies.
To their horror commercial lines producers discovered before the soft market that insurance telemarketing companies had no concept of what a viable sales opportunity was, therefore they were hampered in their ability to deliver them. Then the soft market hit and the insurance telemarketers couldn't even deliver appointments, weak or not.
To learn of an important exception, click on the testimonials link above. I'll let our commercial lines clients sell you our services. Their experiences with us and with our competitors is documented by people that you likely know. Colleagues and competitors.
The commercial lines insurance professional community knows we do not engage in conflicts of interest. They also know that this emerging market will belong to those brokers that stay away from the traditional insurance telemarketing companies and engage in tele-prospecting activity with InsuranceMarketingPros.com
Insurance Commercial Lines Sales
It’s 2012 and the Guru is YOU!
Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 9:00 AM – “Consultants" are playing an increasing and vital role for commercial lines insurance professionals. The commercial lines marketplace has changed, not in the traditional way with hard and soft markets alternating somewhat predictably. Whether it be the economy in general or the commercial lines insurance market, radical change is embraced by few, endured by all, especially those of us that are actively engaged in commercial lines insurance sales.
As I speak with agency principals and producers across the country, their "business plan" has been crafted by very well compensated consultants to address primarily a commercial lines market that no longer exists!
Between 2003 and the autumn of 2011, an unprecedented, seemingly never ending, prolonged "super soft" market condition prevailed for commercial lines rates.
Consultants wisely pointed out that commercial lines insureds were going to remain in place as the incumbent broker was coming in with what had become the insureds "automatic" annual rate reduction. Commercial lines insureds were rightly preoccupied running their businesses, during most of the period business and the economy doing very well indeed.
The Wise Men instructed their commercial lines broker followers to concentrate on retention as the first priority. Reason being, it is common sense and has been a standard operating procedure for anyone that has been able to remain in the commercial lines business for more than a couple of years. Business development, new commercial lines business, would now to depend on referrals, a standard operating practices since day one.
The difference between 2003 and 2011 being that traditional commercial lines insurance sales campaigns for new business were now properly termed "out dated" by the Gurus. The business insurance Gurus earned their fees proving themselves right. It wasn't difficult. When approaching new prospects that were not referrals, they were making money, therefore preoccupied, the incumbent broker was coming in with the "automatic" annual rate reduction and they didn't really hate the incumbent or they wouldn't be doing business with him in the first place. Thus they wouldn't see someone new, and if they did, the commercial lines producer couldn't move the business anyway.
Enter 2012. Even the Gurus now have to admit that much like His Holiness the Pope said recently about Marxism in Cuba, the super soft market no longer existing, soft market plan "no longer accommodates reality."
Next week we will explore "Bring Out the True Guru in You" how you can merge the best practices of the past decade, which is now a "restored commercial lines reality."
Market on the Move
21st Century Methodology/Technology to Address the Emerging Commercial Lines Insurance Market
Friday, March 30, 2012, 9:43 AM – Like most of my clients I did not buy a Mega, or whatever kind of lottery it is ticket today. After nearly a decade of the longest super soft commercial lines business insurance market in the memory of anyone currently alive, we have better things to do.
My clients are presently visiting prospects that are shocked to learn that commercial lines business insurance rates are no longer falling, but are actually rising. Their annual “lock” on reduced commercial lines insurance rates were one of the few bright spots that they have seen since the economy fell apart.
Our commercial lines insurance clients are finding that most of their competitors have neglected to inform their commercial lines insureds about the substantial changes occurring in the market on a daily basis.
The first inkling of this their commercial lines insureds get is when they walk in prior to the ex date and hit them with a business insurance rate increase and not the assumed “automatic” annual reduction that had become standard since 2003.
Both the digital recordings on our Home Page and the dozens of endorsements letters available on our Testimonials Page speak volumes about why you need not any longer depend on the Mega or any other type of lottery to see a great 2012.
OK, your competitors standing on line to get their tickets are right. If they win, their return on investment will be better than if they use Insurance Marketing Pros. We will concede their return on investment would be better than our clients report in their recommendation letters.
The difficulty is that when you buy a lottery ticket you take a chance. When you go one of our commercial lines insurance appointments, it is a viable sales opportunity. Our digital recordings assure that your competitors won’t stand a fighting chance!
Commercial Lines
Now What? A Decade of Rust
Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 9:18 AM - The recent Insurance Journal report "Commercial Lines Prices Up for 4th Straight Quarter: Survey" easily portrays the "promised land of opportunity" producers have wished since 2003. Being a factual report it could not explore fully the limitations the promise holds. Nor the need for immediate action.
The emerging market, today, as always, will belong to those producers that get and stay ahead of the curve on this one.
Normal market cycles do not exist any longer. Your competitors’ sales engine has rusted. Likely, so has yours. Opportunities are created each day as your competitors walk in and present their insureds with the first rate increases in nearly a decade. This creates outrage on the part of the insured and opportunities for you.
Commercial lines relationships are typically lasting. The current environment creates an atmosphere to form new relationships that will endure for years.
If the door lock to your office was stuck you would use WD-40? If your sales engine has understandably rusted just click on our "Testimonials" link. If you actually think the prolonged super-soft market has not rusted your producer's ability, your competitors will be glad to hear that, as they click on it! We do not engage in conflict of interest. Get clicking....