One of our missions is to bring you, the PIPELINE reader, the cutting edge tools to allow you to grow your agencies and to earn a fair profit on your labors. The insurance industry and the world are changing at a rapid rate in front of our eyes. If we’re not agile and always changing with the times, we will be left behind and find our agencies disappearing.
One of the problems we have faced over the decades is finding specialty programs that fit the special needs of our clients and prospects. Some insurance needs that are only identifiable by independent agents are not in the wheelhouse of our standard carriers. Our clients and prospects seem to find the most arcane and unusual risks with which to challenge our expertise. The search for specialty markets has been fragmented between our searching for the markets that we don’t even know exist and the marketing efforts of the Program Managers spending millions of dollars trying to educate the agency force. Unfortunately, if they present their products when we don’t need them, we quickly forget them. And, when we do need them, we wrack our brains trying to remember where we saw the program that our clients need now.
George Nordhaus has been a Marketer Extraordinaire in our industry for longer than 99% of us have been in the business. And age hasn’t slowed him down. He was instrumental in the creation of AgenciesOnline (www.agenciesonline.biz ), a total marketing service for independent agencies. He is the driving force behind MondayMorning, the largest online library of insurance marketing and management information. To get onto his mailing list go to George@agenciesonline.biz .
Now, George had driven a new vehicle for agencies, Monday Morning Markets (MMM)– a market locator service — at no cost to the agencies – and driven by and when your clients need the services. MMM is a way to attract your existing clients and your prospects with over 800 coverages that they can get From You for specialty and program markets.
Imagine giving your buying public the ability to access any specialty or program market through your agency by locating the coverage they need on your website!!
Partnering with Rough Notes, George is creating short videos explaining over 800 specialty markets and program. These Specialty Market Providers (SMP’s) are supporting this effort to explain each specialty market or program to you and to your marketplace. Imagine for a moment that a person in your area can access EVERY ONE of 800+ specialty programs through your website. Once they have viewed the program they can access it by coming through your agency to purchase it.
You are still the Trusted Professional.
You are still the consultant to the client, advising him of the appropriateness of the desired program.
And you get commission on the client’s selected program sold by you.
For a long time we have told you that you need to differentiate yourself from your competitor in order to remain viable and productive for your client base. You have responded by asking what types of things define differentiation. O.K, George Nordhaus’s MondayMorningMarkets is one of them.
No cost to you.
MondayMorningMarkets gives both you and your client base access to hundreds of specialty markets that most of your competitors don’t have and it leaves the direct writers in the dust because they aren’t even aware of the presence of these markets and they simply decline to respond when approached by special needs of clients.
Folks, this is a point of differentiation that has no downside and all upside for agents who choose to use it.