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Saturday, December 1, 2012

Loss Assessors - When Disaster Strikes Your Door, Loss Assessors Help Get the Claim You Deserve

Insuring a property is very easy but claiming for the same when it gets damaged is a very difficult task. When your insured property gets damaged due to some natural calamities or unwanted incidents like accidents or burglary, then it becomes all the more difficult to negotiate the claim with the insurance company.

When you approach the insurance company for the settlement of your claim, the chances of your claim getting easily settled are very less. As soon as you submit a claim to the insurance company, they send out their representatives for handling the claim. Their job is to quickly and cheaply settle down the claim. It would be very difficult to handle everything on your own. You will have to take the assistance of such insurance professionals who will work only for you.

Hiring the services of loss assessors will help you in dealing with all the problems related to your claim in an easier and quicker way. Loss assessors are independent claim specialists. They do not in any way work for the insurance company and thus see to it that you get what you are entitled to.

Loss assessors generally work on first party property claims. Sometimes they also handle third party property claims that involve vehicle damages. They do not directly settle a third party claim i.e. they themselves do not solve the claim. In such cases they only give opinions to their clients.

Loss assessors are your secret weapons who take the entire responsibility of handling the claim upon their shoulders. Having someone by your side reduces the stress and anxiety level and lets you think of some other ways of restoring your life back to normality.

They bring in their years of experience and expertise and negotiate with the insurance company's representative for a fair and quick settlement. They try to bridge the gap between the insured and the insurer i.e. they try to establish a connection and make better co-ordination between the two. They keep the claimant involved in each and every phase of the claim settlement process.

The most important part of a claim submission process is documentation. Loss assessors first read your entire insurance policy and then prepare an estimate of the payment that you actually and truly deserve. Their sole motto is to present the strongest case in front of the insurance company's representative. They put in their heart and soul to make sure that the claimant receives the maximum amount of the settlement.

Loss Adjuster - Work Done by a Loss Adjuster Buying Different Kinds of Insurance Can Be an Important Part of the Investment Plans Prudential Retirement Fund - Best 4 Methods to Find Leads Online GIC's Offer Predictable Investment Returns - And Some Have Insurance Benefits Too Useful Tips for Selling Insurance 3 Mistakes to Avoid When Contacting Insurance Leads

What to Look for in a Good Insurance Agent?

Insurance agent - does the word ring any bells? May be a figure of a relative or a person who pesters you to meet his monthly sales target comes to your mind. Or you remember a person who you rush to do last minute investment to save on income tax.

A good insurance agent is like a good doctor or a lawyer with whom you should have good relationship with. You never know when you will face an emergency needing the help of an insurance agent. Selling you an insurance product is just a very small role that an agent has to perform. As a professional dealing with insurance product, he can perform a very key role in securing your and your family's future, to plan for important events in your life such as your child's marriage or planning your retirement. Following are some of the important attributes you should look for in an insurance agent:

1. He should be a good educator

The world of personal finance is evolving by the day. Companies are wooing customers with newer investment products and sales gimmicks. A good insurance advisor is someone who should help you cut through the clutter and determine what your exact financial goals are and recommend products which should help you achieve those. He should be well informed about the new products available in the market, what are their key features, how safe or riskier are they and what kind of instruments do they invest in, so that he can provide you with insightful advice.

2. He should be the seller of products from multiple insurance companies

This way he will be able to provide you options and help you select the best product suited for your needs. If he sells products from one insurance company, then he would be more interested in getting you to buy that rather than determining which is the best one for you

3. Level of customer service

You insurance agent should facilitate your interaction with the insurer. He should be facilitating your premium payments, send you reminders when your installments are due and keep you updated about the status of your policy. In short, he should act as a single point of contact between you and the insurance company.

4. Help you in the claim process

Insurance claim is a very important process. Generally you go for a claim when you are in a distressed state such as death of the breadwinner of the family or a health insurance claim when someone in your family is hospitalized. Similarly you would need prompt settlement of your claim if you want to finance a planned event such as your child's education. A good insurance agent should assist you with this process, help you with the paper work and promote your case among the insurance company's officials. He should be your advocate to the insurer facilitating fast and apt claims for you.

Selection of an insurance agent is more important than selecting an insurance product itself, as a good agent will automatically assist you to plan your insurance portfolio. In addition to this, you should spend quality time and effort to plan your insurance portfolio with your advisor.

Ways to Generate Insurance Leads

Insurance lead generation is a great challenge to every insurance agent today. Why is this so? The insurance realm is a big world with a lot of different providers in it. The competition goes to the insurance agents because they have to convince people that their policy is better than the other. Of course, when looking for insurance leads, insurance agents should always come up with different approaches. There are some who use the friendly approach wherein they talk to clients casually. This technique works sometimes because there are kinds of clients who easily get comfortable with agents who act as a friend to them. In the other hand, this tactic is a big no for some individuals especially those who are connected to the business world. That is why it is very important that insurance agents come up with other approaches in order to fully convince people to sign the papers. Here are some of the strategies that they use.

Websites - Because of the internet, almost everything is made possible. Distance would also no longer be the problem. Most insurance agents make use of the internet in order to gather insurance leads. By having a fully optimized website, it is very possible for leads to come by their site and ask for a quotation. When this happens, the follow-up comes next. This is where the agent will do a lot of talking and convincing. Lead buying - This is probably one of the options of insurance agents. However, lead buying may seem expensive especially to beginners. There are a lot of insurance lead providers on the internet but before you even purchase one, make sure that the provider is not a fraud. Advertising - There are different types of advertising depending upon the medium an insurance agent uses. There are some who makes use of the newspaper, print out flyers, magazines, and even the television. Personal marketing - While the use of technology is a great privilege to insurance agents, there are still some who prefer doing it the old-fashioned way. These agents are usually very good in talking and convincing people because they are able to persuade them even without fancy ads or websites. That means, if you are going to make use of the personal or also known as man-to-man advertising, you have to make sure that you are good in handling your statements. Referrals - Though you are not able to gather bulk leads by making use of this process, sometimes it is still one of the most effective strategies. The reason is because you will not be the one to do the marketing. All you have to do is to contact your previous clients whom trust you a lot and let them refer you to some of their friends and relatives who do not have any insurance yet. Loss Adjuster - Work Done by a Loss Adjuster Buying Different Kinds of Insurance Can Be an Important Part of the Investment Plans Prudential Retirement Fund - Best 4 Methods to Find Leads Online GIC's Offer Predictable Investment Returns - And Some Have Insurance Benefits Too Useful Tips for Selling Insurance

How Do You Sell in a Tough Economy?

The simple answer is that we make sales in a tough economy by building relationships with prospects. That's because people will buy from people they know and like. The complex part of the answer has to do with building of relationships. It is a process and can be designed in many ways, but in its simplest form it is making multiple contacts with an individual over time. The process can often seem overwhelming when we look at our prospecting list and wonder how we will build all those relationships.

As a business coach and trainer I often find that producers will either focus on their clients and their prospecting activity suffers or they focus on their prospects and their client activity suffers. I spoke to an agent who sold health benefits and he told me he had over 2,000 clients. I asked him how often he made contact with his clients and he said, "only when they called me". The good news was that he had over 2,000 clients, the bad news was that his retention was poor because he was unable to maintain a relationship with his clients. He didn't have a system developed that ensured he was making contact with his current clients and as a result he suffered when it came to renewals. His focus was only on prospecting and selling.

What about prospecting? Many producers will make a few calls with a prospect and give up after the second or third contact. They aren't persistent and their focus isn't on building relationship but only on trying to get a quick sale. Building relationships is tough because it takes time. Many producers just don't have the patience or a system that keeps them focused on developing relationships so that they get the sale. Let's look at the statistics.

Statistics tell us the following about prospecting activity:

- 48% of salespeople never follow-up with a prospect

- 25% make a second contact

- 12% only make three contacts

- ONLY 10% make MORE than three contacts

Statistics also tell us where sales actually come from:

- 2% of sales are made on the 2nd contact

- 5% on the 3rd contact

- 10% on the 4th contact

- 80% of sales are made on the 5th - 11th contact

Armed with the statistics it only makes sense that a good selling strategy involves multiple contacts over time which equals building relationship.

Here's an additional bonus. Referrals can be your best and easiest sales because a referral gives you instant credibility with the prospect. It doesn't equal an automatic sale but it often gets you past the gate keeper. Any sales person with a client base has a great source of referrals. When was the last time you asked your current clients for referrals? Do you know who gives you the most referrals and more importantly are you taking care of those referral sources?

Sure these are great ideas and it's easy to tell someone it this simple, but how do you really implement the things I'm talking about in this article? Is there a simple system that will allow me to develop and maintain relationship with my prospects and clients so that I can make the sale and keep the renewal? Is there a system that shows me the value of my referrals?

With the constantly evolving technology there are sales people who embrace the technology and those that despise the technology. That's because not all technology is created equal. As a sales person, would you embrace technology that was easy to use, affordably priced and complete in the areas of building relationships and a referral network? Wouldn't it be nice to have technology that actually made your time more efficient and kept you focused on the activities that will make you successful? If I could show you a system that could do all these things would you be interested? If you see the value in developing relationships and building a great referral network than you must take a look at the online technology called "purePRM". It was designed by insurance professionals for the industry and we promise it will help you connect with your clients, prospects and referral sources in a whole new way.

"Relationship + Technology = Sales"

4 Tips All Insurance Agents Need In Order To Grow And Maintain Their Book

Insurance is a tough market. If you sell life, you've probably noticed the obvious shift towards low-commission term life vs. the better paying whole life. If you're in the P&C crowd, you've noticed the fixation on the low price game (and when comparing two companies towards with one has no affiliation, price is a big initial selling point). Selling insurance is not as easy as it was in years past. People are strapped for cash, so their buying fewer and smaller policies these days, and a tendency to "jump ship" for a slightly reduced premium (even before contacting their current agent) has created a volatile market and -- for many agents -- volatile books of business. In this modern and touchy insurance market, there are a few key things you can do to both grow your business and increase your persistency rates.

Many agents have turned to calling "cold leads," or even trying to generate "warm leads" to contact and eventually make a sale. While I'm not going to deny the initial usefulness of leads as a partial business solution, they cannot be the whole game. Most insurance leads are going to be the aforementioned price-shoppers, and if they're willing to dump their present carrier for you to save a few hundred dollars a year, what do you think they'll do when someone else comes along who offers them a better deal than you?

So, rather than become dependent upon leads, there are some steps you can take today to increase both the amount of business on your books and also the persistency of your book of business. In no particular order, here they are.

Increase Your Accessibility To Your Clients. Call them. Talk to them. Build that relation. The #1 reason that people don't switch to cheaper insurance is an established relation with their present agent. Growing up, my family had "our" agent, and our agent knew our whole family by sight! I'd never think to switch to anyone else when I knew that "Larry" would have my best interests in mind. Have Your Clients Best Interests In Mind. Guaranteed to work like a charm, if you follow step 1's advice and call them, so much better to call them when you can save them some money. It seems counter intuitive to some agents to offer their clients a cheaper plan than what they have presently, but if you want to cement your clients into place for the long haul, nothing does that like calling them to save them money over what they're already paying. Differentiate Your Agency From Your Competition. This can be the most rewarding step, and also the most challenging, because it might force you out of your comfort zone. Give back to your community (which increases visibility, which also helps you under step 1). Volunteer. Help out at local schools or community organizations. This seems like a no-brainer, but join your local chamber of commerce! These simple steps make you more visible, but also make you stand out in sharp relief to your competition! Expand Your Portfolio. Along the same lines as step three, offering plans that your competition does not offer is a great way to further cement your book in place. Studies have repeatedly shown that the more policies a customer has with a particular agent, the less likely they are to switch. The problem most agents are facing right now is what to add. The traditional insurance market is admittedly over-saturated, hence the price competition.

One insurance broker I know has likened the insurance market to fishing in an over-fished and under-stocked pond. But there are some markets which, though less traditional, are beginning to show themselves as viable markets. I'll high-light just two of these under-fished, over-stocked ponds here.

The first is pet insurance. As the number of children per family has declined, the number of pets per family has increased, and more and more those pets are becoming a part of our families. Veterinary bills are pricey, so some clients are jumping at the opportunity to cover Rover's risks for a reasonable price. Still a novelty by most standards, this is certainly a viable market with little penetration as of yet.

The second area of open ground is legal insurance or "pre-paid legal plans". Broker world declared that, though once a novelty, the concept of pre-paid legal plans has come "from a novelty to an accepted insurance marketing opportunity." (March 2003) While many people may have a knee-jerk reaction of "I've never needed an attorney" when initially broaching the topic, our increasingly litigious society is making the notion of legal coverage something beyond a practicality -- in many cases the service is bordering on a necessity. Most plans will cover a variety of issues, including: Consultation about personal and business matters, phone calls and letters on behalf of the members, contract and document review, will preparation, motor vehicle coverage, trial coverage, audit coverage and more, including identity theft protection and 24 hour "emergency legal coverage".

The benefits of expanding your portfolio are manifold: from the ability to contact your present book with something they can get nowhere else - which makes you more accessible (#1), differentiates you (#3), and shows that you've got your clients interests in mind (#3). Moreover, the ability to find new business where otherwise there would be none, including the ability to work insurance markets outside of your assigned territory (if you have one), can be very liberating -- and lucrative! Many businesses won't consider changing insurance policies very often, but they will entertain offering a highly sought after benefit which can demonstrably increase their bottom line and worker satisfaction. And getting oneo's foot in these doors gets an agent one step closer to being able to speak to the benefit of considering switching other insurance products (Health, Life, Dental, etc).

Not only that, but with generally no claim forms and simplified applications, the ability for onsite group enrollments with payroll deduction, and generally very generous commission structures, offering a non-traditional insurance product can be a viable way to help new agents get their foot in many doors which would be otherwise closed off.

Relying solely or primarily on insurance leads to expand and grow one's business while neglecting one's extant one's book of business is a mistake. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are potentially on the table for an agent with a book of just 500-1000 clients. These are services your clients are going to buy, shouldn't it be you that they buy it from?

Would You Buy A Book Called "We, The Lonely People"?

It sounds like a book for losers! Interestingly it was going to be published under the title until the author and publisher decided to rename it "The I got dumped handbook" It was a best seller. Would it have sold so well under the first name?

Headlines or labels are critical to get clients to buy. This is more important than ever with so much competition for the same consumer dollar and the increasing attitude of live for today and not to worry about tomorrow. So in an effort to ram this message home, here is proof from the publishing industry.

Which of these books would you be inclined to consider buying based on the title?

1) At This Point In Time 2) They Don't Build Statues To Businessmen 3) Before The Anger. These were the work-in-progress titles of actual books.

However when they made the bookshelves the titles had been changed to:

1) All The Presidents Men 2) Valley Of The Dolls 3) Roots.

These sound much more appealing. And to prove it, some books have been published under two or more names. Here is an example. When 'The Art of Courtship' was re-titled 'The Art of Kissing', sales went up four fold!

So, what about financial services? How does carefully selecting book titles apply to selling insurance products and investments? First, it applies to branding. What does your name conjure up? Is there another one that could capture your client's imagination more? Second, what about your slogan if you have one?

Which of these two lead letter headlines worked best? The one that opened with 'An invitation to an investment seminar' or the one that opened with 'Managing your own investments, a 3 part course'. The second outperformed the first by three to one.

Which one of these advertisement headlines worked best? The one that read, 'An invitation to those aged 45 to 55 who wish to travel in retirement' or the one that read, 'The three steps to successful investing'. The first out-performed the later by over seven to one!

Which report would have the most impact with business clients? One that arrived in a plain white Envelope addressed to the recipient, marked only with your brand in the bottom left hand corner, or one that arrived in a red envelope with a large stamp saying 'Business Risk Management Report, Confidential to Addressee'? The later, when followed up with a phone call lead to more than double the number of appointments that the first one did.

These are genuine double tested cases. You could argue that all of this is just smoke and mirrors, but there is no question that the opening line of any advertisement, newsletter article or lead letter is the only one that really matters. So take the time to review your branding, marketing, client communication and all aspects of your imaging. Or you might end up being the lonely people!