As for today, I will reference a plaque on my desk in my home office that speaks volumes to the growth that each of you are trying to accomplish. It reads:
"Don't be afraid to go out on a limb...that's where the fruit is."
It's easy to get comfortable and to stay in our warm cozzy positions, but, if we want to growth and experience life's fruit, we must take a risk. I have never seen anyone win by sitting in the stands.
One to some great info:
I was on a conference call yesterday with our State Executive and so I wanted to pass on some of the key points of the call that I thought would be of interest to you:
- Combined Ratios - All Lines: 96.6%, Auto: 99.3%, Fire: 94.35%, Speciality: 93%, Commercial: 97%. Its been along time since the company was able to continue to post these kinds of numbers. What does this mean? It means we are building surplus... What does that mean? It means the ability to be flexible on rates, underwriting and investing back into the business in the future... How can you continue to support this? Protecting our rate by continuing to be great field underwriters...
- New Business Growth Over Prior Year - District 34 was recognized on the Call, by name, for experiencing both Auto and Fire having double digit growth NB growth over the prior year... Congrats to all of you who are growing. If you are not growing over prior year, as discussed in our last District Meeting, then look to all of the initiatives we have been discusseing to change the tide. You can do it...
- Bristol West - Still no new news... We are held up at the DOI. Our Home Office legal team is working feverishly to get this fixed. Stay tuned...
- VIP - Data is starting to stream in from around the country on those agents who are using the VIP Proposal System. 10% of agents are now trained on the program. The early data suggests that that agents that are growing the most as to NB are those that are VIP trained... We expected this, but to have the data to support it just validates our better senses... If you have not played with this system, please do so...
- VIP Training - We have trained the following agents on VIP which includes a block of other topics such as e-CMS, Campaign Management, Reports, Importing, Marketing, Consultative Selling, 5 Step Close, FORE, etc...: Schulz, Atadero, Miller. Costas (10/11) and Forsel (10/15) are scheduled as well as a combined training class for all Career Agents (10/18). I have 10/29 who ever wants it...
Leads, Leads, Leads, - We have a goal to help each agent upload atleast 5,000 leads into your e-CMS Prospecting Campaign. We started this process last week and currently have several agents in the District who are taking advantage of this program.
If you load 5,000 leads and get a 1% response, that's 50 call backs. See and sell 50% of them (25) and you will expereince a nice profit. The average VIP is worth $400 bucks so you do the math. Postcards are $.30 and the campaign sends out 2 per year. Ad Aid is available so your costs are 50% of that! The numbers work...
It is quite a process to download leads from InfoUSA and then upload them into e-CMS. I have committed the District resources to make this happen. This is a huge project! Thank you to Marc Pavlick who is teaching my Reserve Class today so I can focus on this project. We are currently working with 8-10 agencies who have provided their preferred zip codes, search criteria and dashboard access fields so we can upload the data. Once uploaded you are in a great place to do repeat marketing at will... The more I dig into e-CMS it is truly awesome.
Send us your info so we can help you grow.
Have a great day.
