2008 Annual Symposium for Institute of WorkComp Professionals

The Hidden Paycheck System. Works well as an entrée with Workers Compensation or Benefits.

• Open doors to new accounts
• Create higher retention with existing clients
• Uncover new sales opportunities within employer-sponsored plans

Increase revenues and profits without expanding staff with the tools from Agency Benefits Coach.

Institute of WorkComp Professionals' 2007 Annual Symposium

Jim Lee and Nancy Young attended the Institute of WorkComp Professionals’ 2007 Annual Symposium (www.workcompadvisors.com) held in Laguna Beach from February 11 to February 13, 2007. This year’s Symposium, attended by 135 agents from across the U.S., was an opportunity to network, learn, and socialize with other insurance professionals for two and a half days, while surrounded by the beautiful California sand and surf.

Jim’s presentations were on “How Systems Can Increase Employee Benefits’ Revenues & Profits”. They were well received and those attending left with several proven ideas that they could implement immediately. The theme of the sessions focused on Deming’s quote: “How to produce the next unit of profit at the lowest possible cost, thereby optimizing resources.”

Through a drawing, two agencies were fortunate enough to win a full subscription of Agency Benefits Coach by their attendance.

The next symposium by the Institute will be held in May 2008, in Asheville, North Carolina.

Turnkey Organization

As an independent advisor, you may not have adequate resources to create and develop the tools you want to use to make error-free communications to your clients, prospects and carriers (letters, forms, RFPs, spreadsheets, etc.); to assure perfect submissions to your carriers; to present a clear, professional communication image to your audiences. Your carriers want you to carry their brand and they offer you nice documents in that image. Presenting multiple carriers, how do you differentiate yourself with your own image and brand to achieve the influence you need as an independent advisor? Sticky issue. There are several tools and forms you can create yourself, borrow from a study group, take from a carrier and try to re-create in your own image and brand. It’s all very time consuming!

AgencyBenefitsCoach.com solves this issue for advisors who sell employee benefits. The innovation: take the best practices (proven) tools of several, successful contributing employee benefits agencies across North America and offer them for sale on the web. Over 180 audited, certified tools in 12 categories can be downloaded as you need them and brand as your own. This amounts to your own library of tools for your business. Together they enable you to present a clear and branded image to your audiences and a clear and present competitive danger for your competition.

The man behind this idea is Jim Lee, CLU, ChFC, AEP, RHU, REBC, who “retired” when he sold his Lakeland, FL agency. This problem bugged Jim and Nancy Young, RHU, his office and services manager of 17 years. They made the deals, audited and certified each form, used technology to make this service entirely web-based, and launched it last month after a year perfecting each tool.

Look for their ½ page ad in this issue of Broker World or go online to www.agencybenefitscoach.com. If you sell employee benefits plans, a brief survey there can help you decide if you need this service specific to selling employee benefits.

If you do not sell employee benefits, look for this type of innovation for what you do sell. The WWWeb offers new things every day, and more and more services are becoming web-based in spite of security and privacy paranoia, such as renting computer programs online rather than owning the software on your own computer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and competitors) and keeping it updated. On-web email has become immensely popular already and is still growing quickly. Watch for innovations around this burgeoning technology.

From Broker World Magazine, December 2006, “Innovate to Outperform”
by John Melchinger, Private Practice Marketing columnist