As we begin our next series of on-site seminars in virtually every state, we have been asked by a large number of agents, “Why commit to a long schedule of touring seminars when webinars have become an easy way to disseminate information to a lot of people at lower cost in both dollars and in time?”
The answer is a little complex.
We’ve both attended and delivered our fair share of webinars since the concept was developed some years ago. It is, in fact, a much less expensive way to deliver information. Unfortunately, it is also a much less effective medium for implementing change than traditional face-to-face interaction.
Most of us attend webinars, normally delivered during business hours sitting at our desks-in our busy offices — with our staff wondering what is keeping us glued to our monitors for a short or long period of time. Webinars lend themselves to ‘sound-bite’ delivery and most of them are from 20 minutes to an hour in duration.
Surveys have indicated that most webinar attendees are called away from their attention to the webinar at least once and, once distracted, more often than not they do not return to the webinar. If they do return to the webinar they have lost continuity and find it difficult to regain what the webinar leader has covered in their absence.
The webinars may include very valuable information but that delivery is not absorbed as readily as a personal interaction during which questions may be asked and expansion of ideas can be made. If the webinar is live, participants are able (and encouraged) to ask questions, but most do not and recorded webinars don’t even give you that option.
The seminars we have prepared (1/2 day each) are on two of the most critical issues facing agents today, “Producer Acquisition, Compensation, Motivation and Management” and “The Asset Protection Model of Relationship Selling” (selling away from price and building relationships with prospects and clients). Each of these topics are among the top searches in the Archive section of our website and we KNOW that agents would like to have more producers (as long as the agency can earn a profit from their efforts) and would like to teach every employee in the agency how to make clients their friends instead of just trying to sell them the lowest price.
Once we complete our ‘tour’ we will certainly provide a recorded webinar to every agent who attended as a reminder and documentation of everything that we share during the seminar. We are also discussing offering the full webinars, live, to agents who miss the ‘live’ seminars although with a caveat that much more information is shared through live interaction because of the more conducive Q&A session.
We recently completed a series of seminars on Insurance Agency Succession and Perpetuation Planning, attended by several thousand agency owners who knew they had to plan for their next generation, but didn’t quite know how. As we tally the results of our seminar series, 50% of the agents attending intended to create a Succession or Perpetuation Plan within the next year and a full 25% have actually created the Plan (many with our assistance) that secures the future for the agency owners and for their next generation. If you missed this seminar, call your Agents Association and invite us to address this topic at their next I-Day, Convocation or Annual Meeting – or call me directly and we’ll visit you to create your own Succession and/or Perpetuation Plan (856 779 2430; al@agencyconsulting.com ).
Seminars ‘On Demand’
The primary difference between our new seminars and seminars conducted in the past is that YOU, THE AGENTS, will determine where we go and when. The link below will take you to our website listing the regions of every state that we intend to visit to deliver this message. We encourage you to link to the area of your state that you would most likely attend a seminar. As we get a sufficient number of agents interested in a region of a state, we will schedule the seminar and give each agent expressing an interest in the subject the date and specific location. Of course there is NO OBLIGATION when you indicate your interest, but it will tell us where the agents are who would like to hear about these critical topics.
We will schedule these seminars in the most cost effective way possible to minimize the cost to the participants, so every agent will be able to afford to attend.
Of course we still invite our Association partners to program one or both of these seminars within their association meetings to give the member-agents the most ‘bang’ for their buck in these meetings. We will accommodate as many association meetings as we can.
So click HERE to register your interest. Tell your friends to do the same and forward this article to them and to your association for their participation, as well. OUR GOAL IS TO IMPLEMENT HEALTHY CHANGE TO ALLOW OUR AGENCY CLIENTS TO GROW AND EARN MORE PROFITS, even as expenses, competitive pressures and commission changes exerts pressures in the opposite direction. We have the answers to the “producer” issues for agencies and we can convert agencies from price-driven strategies that grow less productive every year. We just need the forum to share this information with you.