Don’t confuse a marketing strategy with random marketing activities. A marketing strategy means you have a clear plan with systems in place that allow you to repeat those systems and obtain consistent results. A marketing strategy isn’t about hoping you will get a result, but rather knowing you will get a result because you can track and measure every component of your system. It’s not as complicated as it may sound, and it’s certainly worth the effort you put into it.

Your marketing exists for a purpose. Pleasing someone else, looking good, or developing a brand aren’t acceptable purposes. Those are things an advertising sales representative, a printer, or a graphic designer will try to sell you on to part you from your money without providing you with a measurable outcome. The purpose of marketing is to generate a potential customer. If your marketing doesn’t or can’t consistently and predictably generate potential customers stop doing it because you’re wasting your money.

The objective of marketing is to start a connection with a complete stranger that will lead to an appointment. The better and stronger you can make that initial connection the sooner you will fill your appointment calendar with the people who want to do business with you, and the sooner you can stop wasting your time trolling for business in all the wrong places. Marketing has many different forms and media and many different options to initiate that first connection. You can’t expect good marketing results when you don’t know how to make the connections that will get you the outcome you want.

Nothing happens until you or your marketing systems are put into action. You need a good strategy that produces specific actions that need to be taken. Initially you will be testing these actions on a small scale until you know what works. When you know what works you have the opportunity to ramp up your actions and make them automatic.

Ultimately your marketing strategy is only as good as the results it produces. If you aren’t getting the results you want and you know you have a sound strategy it’s a clear sign you didn’t do something right. Pinpoint the problem and make corrections and adaptations. Some places to look include: your message doesn’t match the market, your using the wrong media for the market you’re trying to reach, you haven’t made an emotional connection, or you didn’t provide a clear and pressing reason for the receiver to take action.

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You don’t understand the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction states that you get exactly what you attract to yourself. You aren’t getting sales because you aren’t attracting sales, and you aren’t attracting sales because your focus is on everything but the desired outcome you want.

As you look at the steps you have to go through to even get the opportunity to sell you realize it’s a long drawn out process. First you have to have people to contact or leads, you need to make a connection with those people, you need to secure an appointment with them, and finally you get to hold the appointment and have the opportunity to actually sell them something. This isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds, is it? As you think about all those steps begin to realize that you’re getting what you’re focusing on.

Your first worry is having people to contact. So you focus on identifying and finding people you can reach out to. You’ll find that if you really focus on getting people you can contact that you’ll have people to contact. You may also notice that few if any of these people end up being clients. So you have to stay focused on more and more lead generation because the ones you’re connecting with so far just aren’t working out like you want and need them to. At some point you begin to realize that if you were able to make a better connection it would be easier for you to secure appointments.

So you place more of your focus on improving your connection. As you do you find it’s easier to secure those appointments yet not very many of those appointments seem likely to turn into a sale in the near future. So you aren’t much closer to selling than you were when you didn’t have anyone to meet with. If you change your focus from the beginning based on the Law of Attraction you’ll attract more sales.

When your focus is on sales from the beginning you still have to do all the things you have to do to get the appointment. But because your focus is on the sale you do a better job of identifying and obtaining leads. It’s easier for you to make a strong connection and secure the appointment. And when you hold that appointment because your focus is on the sale you’re listening for understanding. You’re working with the prospect helping them to realize why your solution is best for them. And because you’re sharing the same information and ideas it’s easy for the prospect to make a “yes” decision.

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Less than 5% of the people who start in the business remain in the business after 5 years. How do you prevent yourself from being just another count in the statistics for those who failed? Coming into the business you know that for some the potential is huge and life changing, as far as, potential earnings are concerned. Yet this isn’t the case for the average or below average producer. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to be a top producer, but nearly everyone finds it hard to get there and stay there.

For those who fail out of the business it’s such a dramatic, traumatic, and demoralizing experience they can’t even think about ever trying it again. I come across these folks all the time and their comment is always, “gosh if I had only known you I might have been able to make it”. The people I work with usually say, “I did everything they said to do and it didn’t work”. And they’re right the things you’re being told to do don’t work. You’re being told to do counterproductive things betting on a numbers game trying to be so highly active that you eventually establish a business. It’s a wrong approach, and you pay the price and suffer the consequences.

You are a small business owner, and there are things that work in business and things that don’t; and there’s an order of doing things that increases your likelihood for success. A business cannot survive without customers, and in order to get customers a business must attract them. Please read that sentence and understand there is a big difference between attracting customers and hunting them. To attract customers you must know who you are trying to attract, and what is attractive to them. This knowledge enables you to generate marketing communications that attract customers to you.

There is only so much a business can do for free without going broke. When you’re run around trying to meet with anyone who has a pulse who’s paying for that, and what are you getting in return? You are the one paying and you’re getting about zip in return for all your efforts. Do you see attorneys running around meeting with people offering them a free legal review? Of course you don’t, people don’t place value on your services if you want to give them away to anyone for free.

A business must make the most effective use of their resources to obtain the highest return. It’s just a matter of productivity. Never confuse activity with results and productivity. Business isn’t just a numbers game where you’re betting on the odds. Businesses that follow that philosophy fail. Business definitely involves understanding your numbers and knowing what to track, and getting predictable results from your actions. Business is all about the bottom line. If you want to succeed where so many others have failed the bottom line is you need to understand and follow the same principles that any small business owner would follow and that is: learn how to market yourself in a way that attracts the customers you want, focus on productivity and results not activity, be able to track and measure and predict those results, learn how to sell like a sales professional not like an insurance agent, and exceed customer expectations.

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The marketing tactics used by your competition, and perhaps that you’re using now, stinks. It’s so bad you’d be better off not even marketing yourself because what you’re doing now is turning people off. But because you’re reading this I know that you want to be different and you want to be better and you want consistent and predictable results in the form of leads of real qualified prospects entering your sales funnel.

How do you turn on the attraction factor? Don’t look at anything that big companies or your peers are doing. What they’re doing doesn’t work for small businesses and you are a small business. Branding and all that is great if you have five or more years to wait, and you don’t mind hoping something will happen. You want real people who have a genuine interest raising their hand and saying, “hey, I want to know more about how you can help me”. That’s attraction. Think about the hundreds, if not thousands of marketing messages you receive in a day. Which ones do you notice and pay attention to? You pay attention to the ones that are talking directly to you about something you want. It doesn’t matter what form that message comes in you are only paying attention to the messages related to something you want. You don’t and won’t work to try to figure out or extrapolate how that message might pertain to you. No, you pay attention to the message that hits you right between the eyes and clearly communicates exactly what you want and how that message gets you exactly what you want.

How do you turn on the action meter? The problem with most marketing communications, and branding communications in particular, is that there isn’t anything for you to do if for some strange reason you want to know more. The potential value would have to be enormous and clearly stated beyond a doubt to get you to proactively research how you could connect with the communication sender. But you wouldn’t do that because that type of marketing communication doesn’t give you a reason to do anything, and so you don’t. When you provide a marketing communication in any format that communication must be explicitly tied to an action that you’ve clearly spelled out for someone to take. If you don’t specifically tell your potential customers to do something, and how to do it, they won’t. It would just be work to have to figure all that out on your own and people won’t do that.

How do you put together an effective communication? An effective communication is a little bit like a really good newspaper story. In your communication you need to answer the 5 why’s, according to copywriting expert Michel Fortin. The person receiving your communication should clearly know why they’re receiving this communication. They must understand why it’s important the communication is coming from you. They must understand why this is important now. They must understand why the topic of your communication is important to them. And they must know how and what to do to take action. Do this in a way that’s interesting and the person receiving your communication will be fully engaged with every word.

How do you know what works? There is one and only one definitive way to know what works, and that’s through tracking and measuring and testing. Marketing is serious business intended to earn you serious business. Don’t guess or hope, know the numbers. When you know what works you have a system to consistently and predictably generate the kind of business you want.

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Insurance leads are great when you continue to receive it in a regular basis. As long as you know that you have good leads coming in, you are one safe insurance agent who can assure a bright future ahead his insurance business term.

What you need to do though is to make sure as well that however abundant your leads are, you know how to handle them well. This refers to the period starting from the initiated contact you do, to qualifying them and up to the time these leads become your contact and mainstay clients. When these leads become your clients, it even gives you all the more reason to exert good effort in performing honest and well with the service that you render. Always keep this thought in your mind that there are so many insurance agents working their best to get as many clients as they can, and one error with your current clients could be a big loss in your business.

But how do you qualify your leads to become clients? There are a lot of strategies an insurance agent can use. But since people have been exposed to the same types of insurance approach ever since business-minded people started to gain interest in making money through insurance, responses aren’t all positive. Expect for your leads to be skeptical and most of them have probably already made a choice in selecting the insurance of their choice.

Is it because you were too late or you weren’t just too different nor better compared to other insurance agents and companies? Or probably you weren’t too convincing enough in pitching in your sales talk. It doesn’t matter, when you face cases like this in the course of qualifying your leads as clients, it just gives you an even better reason to work better with the next lead on your list.

When you are building a solid relationship with leads, you have to make sure that you are directing them to the right path. Information is important so together with your insurance website (a very important Internet and business tool at this point), you fill all the answers of the questions they have in their minds. Do everything you can to let these people know that you should be their insurance agent and no one else can do it better.

Shareen Aguilar is a writer for Insurance Leads Generation which has information on generating Insurance Leads.

Finding success in business isn’t hard when you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. It can be as easy as 1-2-3. It begins by building on a foundation of specialized knowledge, marketing yourself in a way that people understand fulfills their wants, and helping people to buy in a way that generates current and future business and referrals.

The body of knowledge that you could potentially learn is too vast for you to ever be an expert or a specialist in all of them. If you can find one main area with some related sub-areas that you can obtain specialized knowledge in you have a competitive advantage. Being a generalist never results in real success. Just think about it. Do you pay your general practitioner the same fee for an office call as you do a specialist like a pediatric orthopedic surgeon? When you get advice from the pediatric orthopedic surgeon don’t you place more value on that advice than you do the advice you get from the general practitioner? If the advice you received from both didn’t seem to agree whose advice would you be more inclined to take?

Specialized knowledge only represents a potential for success. In order to take that potential and turn it into success you must learn how to package that specialized knowledge that you hold in a way that gets the attention of the people who really want the benefits of that knowledge. This is where doing your pre-marketing research is absolutely critical. Now don’t let that sound scary to you because it’s not complicated and it really isn’t all that time consuming, but really knowing and not guessing makes all the difference in your success. And you never want to base your plans on what someone else in the industry says is true about the market. Gather this information for yourself so you know it’s true in your market because that’s the only one that matters to you.

You have to get the attention of the right people. You make that happen by effectively communicating your message. Effective communication gets the attention of the right people. It speaks to what they want not what they need. And it provides a way for them to connect with you.

When you get the appointment it’s time to turn potential into cash. This is where you demonstrate that you’re a real sales professional or that you’re not. This is where you begin life long relationships that build into repeat business and really good referrals, or at best you close one sale that won’t stick. A real sales professional doesn’t sell, but they do help people reach a buying decision. They do that by listening and making sure you both have the same information at the same time. Put it all together and you have an easy recipe for success.

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Tired of dialing for dollars and being told it’s just a numbers game? If you’re currently just making phone calls off a list and are tired of getting abysmal results stop doing that, and start working smarter rather than harder. First, only call people that you’ve specifically targeted and you’ve reached out to and provided value. Second, be prepared to handle the call efficiently and effectively. Third, realize the phone call is part of your disqualification process. When you get to the point of making the calls you’re only doing so to sort the wheat from the chafe.

You’re making the call and that makes you responsible for the call. Get prepared before you pick up that receiver. Even though you’ve pre-warmed the people you’re calling with some value added marketing you still need an attention getting opening that will earn you a few seconds to introduce yourself and gain favorable attention. Your opening needs to powerfully and succinctly communicate your benefit position.

One reason you find it hard to pick up the phone is because you don’t like being rejected, who would? Rejection is awful and it destroys your self confidence. The lower your self confidence the higher the likelihood you’ll be rejected. After you’ve gotten their attention the next step is to either qualification or disqualify the person you’re talking to. One of the best ways to do that is to get them talking. The easiest way to get them talking is to ask a great question. You’ll know when you have a good question because most people will comment, “great question”.

You’re on a roll now, don’t blow it. Once you get them talking your responsibility is to listen. You shouldn’t be talking at all. You should only be asking more questions for greater understanding. As you talk both you and the person you called will come to realize there is clearly a reason for you to talk further, they have an interest but aren’t ready to take action, or they just aren’t a good fit for you.

Take responsibility and properly close the conversation. Notice I used the word conversation. If you’ve done a good job your call is a conversation not a pitch and you aren’t manipulating someone into meeting with you who doesn’t want to meet you. You don’t want to waste your time meeting with people who aren’t even prospects. There are three ways you could properly close this call. If they’re a good prospect who wants to know more offering a meeting is appropriate. If they’re a prospect but not ready to take action provide a way to stay in touch and continue to provide value for them. If they’re just not a real prospect thank them for their time and ask them who they know that is looking for the benefit you provide.

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The objective of marketing is getting the attention of people who are interested in learning more about doing business with you. Using also ran marketing techniques that tell the prospect about you and your products is a complete waste of both time and money. If you want to connect with the people you’re marketing to you have to get their attention and provide value.

Why do you respond to a marketing message? Whether it’s something you get in the mail, something you hear on the radio or TV, or something someone says to you in person you respond to a marketing message because it got your attention. It got your attention because the message told you something that you thought might be of value to you or for you. Once they had your attention you wanted to know more. Smart marketers provide you with a way to know more.

Give your prospects a low risk way to get more information. Have you ever called an 800 number to get a free brochure, or send an email requesting a free guide, or faxed a completed form to get a report, or visited a website to sign-up for an alert? These are all low risk calls to action. You weren’t ready to meet with someone or to have someone call you. You just wanted to know more so you could decide if you wanted to take it a step further. Because there was a low risk way for you to do it, you did it.

The reason you took the time to respond was because whatever was offered in the call to action held perceived value for you. For example, you wanted to know how to compare refrigerators for energy efficiency without going to the store and looking at all the models. Your prospects might want to have a quick guide for understanding the differences between LTC policies. The item offered doesn’t have to be unique or closely held information. Your prospects just want something that quickly helps them to understand differences, or that helps them to understand what they really need to know to make a good decision about something. Would you want to read a free report about the 7 biggest mistakes to avoid when leasing a car? Apply that concept in your marketing.

When you responded to those messages you were actively looking for something, you were thinking about something related to the offer, or you were thinking you should be thinking about whatever was related to the offer. With your offer you’ve now made a good starting connection with three different types of prospects. You have caught the attention of the ready buyer, the soon to be ready buyer, and the some day ready buyer. Now all you have to do is move them from education to buying deepening your relationship all along the way.

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How much insurance claims adjusters can make per annum is the subject of considerable interest and speculation to those interested in a career in claims. As unstable weather continues into the fall, and the Atlantic hurricane season reaches its stride, its important to correctly understand the financial landscape of the adjuster industry.

Some folks have heard from their girlfriend’s brother or an estranged uncle that claims adjusting is a money tree. The money tree sits there blooming Benjamins, apparently just waiting happily to be plucked by any newcomer with the inside scoop. And as an added bonus, you really don’t have to do work. The opposite extreme is my own previous misconception of the monetary compensation for claims adjusters which is that they made next to nothing and it was essentially a dead end job. This is as far from the truth as the money tree concept but, I would hazard to guess, a much more prevalent misunderstanding.

So how much money does an insurance adjuster really make?

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, claims adjusters earned an average of $44,220 in 2004. The top ten percent earned more than $72,620. The bottom ten percent earned less than $27,220. This seems like a fairly significant disparity. What type of adjuster is at the bottom and what type at the top?

The answer to this question depends largely upon the type of claims adjuster you are referring to. In general, there are two types of adjusters: staff adjusters who are salaried employees of an insurance carrier, and independent adjusters who are independent contractors working for adjusting firms. This initial difference will make as much of a difference in pay structure as the type of claims actually handled - from worker’s compensation to multi-million dollar commercial properties.

Staff adjusters are typically going to be earning less than independent adjusters and in some cases dramatically less. $25,000-$60,000 is a reasonable salary range for a career staff claim adjuster.

An independent adjuster in a good year, however, especially if he or she works catastrophe claims, can make well in excess of $100,000.

Staff adjusters can make a good stable living. For independent adjusters, the opportunity can be a little more interesting and, I think, exciting. Independent adjusters working catastrophe claims make essentially a percentage of the amount of each claim they settle. This system of payment is known as a fee schedule and is formulated differently for each insurance carrier represented and storm situation confronted. For example, an independent adjuster handling hurricane claims may receive a fee schedule that pays $500 for claims between $3,000 to $5,000, $650 for claims between $5,000 and $7,500, and $750 for claims between $7,500 and $10,000. An adjuster will receive between 60-70% with the other 30-40% going to the adjusting firm they work for. Hurricane adjusters can easily average $10,000 settlement per claim and thus average between $400 and $500 dollars in their pocket per claim. A good adjuster should be closing 2 to 4 claims per day with superb adjuster closing 4 to 7.

Making over $1,000 a day as an independent adjuster working catastrophe claims is common and very attainable. In this way, a good independent adjuster can surpass six figures income in less than six months.

So, is this the money tree after all? Well, not so fast. Remember that catastrophes, especially catastrophes sufficient to employ significant numbers of adjusters, are relatively few and far between. During “dry” spells for independent adjusters, work can be scarce and competition fierce for the claims that do come along. That said, there is a tremendous and exciting opportunity for very real, very lucrative money when disaster does strike.

Whether its operating on staff or as independent contractor, claims adjusting offers potential for solid and, in some cases, spectacular income.

In addition to his work as a catastrophic claims adjuster, Daniel Kerr acted as the V.P. of Operations for one of the most successful adjuster licensing companies in the country - helping to grow the business into the most recognized brand in the industry.

Along with his claims adjuster blog, Mr. Kerr currently co-owns and operates AdjusterPro, a rapidly growing business dedicated to providing the finest resources available to aspiring claims adjusters. AdjusterPro is a certified educational provider for the Texas Department of Insurance and will be offering adjuster licensing, software training, and continuing education courses this fall. For free consultation on advancing your insurance adjuster career or to find out more about how to become an insurance adjuster, call AdjusterPro directly at 214-606-8370.