ATTENTION PRODUCTION MANAGERS

If you have an exciting program or sales contest for your agents that is highly important EMAIL IT TO US!!!

If it is crap and you just want to send it to us anyway go ahead and fax it.

FAX IS DEAD

That is all =)

MISLEADING ADVERTISING NOT BEING TRACKED ON FACEBOOK YET

When I go to my facebook page lately ive seen an ad for the following:

Obviously this lady is thrilled to have gotten insurance for 12.00 a month. Im not sure what state and at what coverage she is getting a quote but it seems a bit misleading to me. When you click the ad you are sent to cheapinsurance.com which then redirects you to quotewizard.com. Ive gotten a quote on quotewizard before it compiles the rates from several top captive companies like Nationwide, State Farm, Allstate and companies like Geico and my rate wasnt anywhere near 12.00 per month.

I suppose if they sold one insurance policy at 12.00 per month they can claim this but isnt this ad upsetting more folks than it is serving. The sad truth is people are becoming very accustomed to being lied to by ads. When they finally get their quote for 50.00 per month they probably just say "eh, all in a day".

Its sad we cant trust anyone on the web anymore. If I were one of these represented carriers I would demand a little more accuracy in the advertisement by my brokers.

THE PERSONAL TOUCH IN INSURANCE

Every day some executive somewhere is thinking of a way to cut costs to compete. His ultimate decision comes down to people or processes. As insurance agents and insurance IT people we all know what is at stake with automation especially in underwriting. It starts out harmless enough... an algorithm designed to allow those "perfect risks" to bypass a human who would only be bothered with its existence. Then the algorithm is altered to further scrutinize a risk based on a set of questions which allows more business to bypass a human. Now the company can slow their hiring or maybe shave off a few payroll dollars here and there. The algorithm is altered again this time to work backwards and only prompt the human if there are potential issues that require his meaty human brain's reasoning skills. Now some real payroll dollars can be dropped. This is a great idea lets outsource IT to someone who can really engineer some monster algorithms, sure maybe they dont understand our culture or insurance but they can really crunch a digit. This is working great, so great in fact that we can cut management because the algorithm is making profitable decisions. Whatever the algorithm says goes thats how we'll turn a profit.

If you are working at an insurance company and are reading this READ CLOSER! People are not a math equation. That girl at the Starbucks who always wears her pink skirt on Mondays will inevitably change it up and decide to go with the black slacks. Whether you treat your customers like an equation or your employees you will be sorry in the long run. Our meaty brains will sniff this out and decide the machine will not control us.

Im not trying to get into red pills and blue pills here. This is not the Matrix this is a business. This will be the battleground for the next decade. People will pay slightly more for a meaty brain on the other end of the line. If this were not true Geico would own the market.

As we get older we gravitate towards more big meaty brains with good judgement to take care of what matters most to us. Remember that next time you make a decision that will increase your stock by .03 points by firing 100 meaty brains. Your going to upset alot of meaty brains that sell your product and your gonna alienate alot of meaty brains that could buy your product!

Sincerely,

Big Meaty Brain, CISR CIC

IT Support and Agents

If all the IT folks out there in the insurance industry would simply realize all we [agents] want to do is sell policies our relationships could be greatly improved.

Today I spoke to a really friendly IT girl about an error massage preventing me from printing an application. She wanted to trouble shoot and was desperate to solve the puzzle while I just wanted an application. Finally I had to tell her is there any way I can get an application now and you guys can go to work on the bug later???

You would think our goals would be one in the same and maybe in the long run they are - a smooth process. But our immediate goals conflict. Since her salary is payed by policy premium she should help me sell this policy. She was looking for a quick fix but after 5 minutes there simply wasn't one. Lets sell some policies and fix the bug on the backend!

STOP ROBO-CALLING ME INSURANCE COMPANY

So United Health robo-called my office today even though we have a sales rep, a brokerage, a newsletter, regular meetings and email news.... The robo-call was prompting me to log in to unitedhealthproducers.com to get news.

Hey United Health in this time of uncertainty for your industry stop upsetting your agents by robo calling them and find a way to communicate that doesn't border on campaign tactics or debt solution offers.

... if you must robo-call at least add an option to talk to someone or be taken off your list.

WISCONSIN INSURANCE LAWS CHANGE

On June 29th of this year our governor Jim Doyle signed the Wisconsin State Budget Bill. In this bill were changes to our insurance law. Among these changes was a new state minimum that would change our state required minimum liability from one of the lowest up to the highest.

You would think as an insurance agent this would make me happy however I believe it was not done for practical reasons. I believe consumers should have choice. Now they have less choice.

As you know when you get more of something you usually have to pay more. People have started to call their local lawmakers complaining about this. Their response was astounding.

Apparently Representative Thomas Nelson has never been to Mc Donalds. When you supersize something it costs you more. His argument is akin to saying that when Mc Donalds charges you more for supersizing, now that Wisconsin has mandated all meals be supersized, they are doing so because of their poor business practices.

FLO 1 AARON 0

I just sold a Progressive Direct policy due to licensing restrictions.... gag me with a spoon. At least Flo will be able to buy more Prozac now!