Farm Insurance Agents » Farm Insurance Agents

Successful Farm Insurance Agents Understand That Knowing Their Clients Is The Key

admin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:00:59 +0000

When it comes to asking questions that get results, no one does it better than a successful farm insurance agent.

They seem to have a special knack – you might even call it a philosophy of communication that gets their prospects – the farmers and business owners who depend on them, to open up and tell them about their hopes and fears for their family and their business.

The best of them ask the most in depth questions and get answers to them, without seeming aggressive or pushy. It often comes across to their clients and prospects that they have an interest in them along with a natural curiosity that always makes them want to know more.

And they are masters at creating a relaxed atmosphere for everyone – an environment that encourages openness.

Successful farm insurance agents always seem to know which questions to ask in order to get to the root of the matter – to learn clearly what’s important to the business owners and farmers they serve. They know how to involve their prospects in the conversation.

They know that selling in the 21st Century is collaborative – it is not a monologue sales pitch.

The result, more often than not, is that the prospect ends up creating the solution – makes the buying decision themselves. Their clients come to their own conclusions regarding the best actions to take for the security of their family and business.

Successful farm insurance agents involve their prospects in a way that makes it natural for them to tell them their deepest secret fears and desires. When they demonstrate their willingness to listen, these successful business owners open up completely.

Farm insurance agents I have spoken with tell me this is not magic – it’s just their way. They tell me that their attitude about questioning is what allows them to establish a line of communication with their prospects.

Successful farm insurance agents know that people want to tell you everything – if you are interested in listening, if you are not challenging them, if you are interested in opening up a line of communication – not just pitching your favorite product du jour.

Successful farm insurance agents know theirs is not a relationship that presents a challenge to the other advisiors – they complement one another and because the farm insurance agent gains so much personal insight so quickly, they are positioned as an advocate for the farmer with these other advisors.

The example that comes to mind is trying to push a shopping cart full of beach stuff through deep sand. After about three steps you’re stuck. The harder you push the more stuck you become. So, being the clever resourceful person that you are, you go around to the front and begin to pull it.

Bingo, it moves easily – the same way as a business owner moves through the process of helping their farm insurance agent understand them better. Ask them whatever you want to know and they’ll respond if they believe you are really interested.

Once they are invloved telling their story the agent has their attention and vice versa. Only then can the conversation become a collobration that results in action being taken.

Remember the expression. “I’m rubber and you’re glue – anything you say bounces off me and sticks to you” from when you were a kid? The successful farm insurance agent understands that their role in an interview with a farmer or business owner is to be the rubber.

They are a virtual mirror. A mirror held up to the prospect’s face – to allow them to see themselves more clearly – to better understand what he or she feels is important – that they want and deserve for their family, their business and themselves.

Farm insurance agents understand that their role is to understand their clients inner most hopes, dreams, and fears.

The problems discussed have become the client’s problems. The solution is the client’s solution and it will be very difficult for anyone to upset the decisions the client has made and derail the actions being taken.

Farm Insurance Agents in the News

admin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:16:53 +0000

When it comes to finding the right person to handle the insurance needs of your family, farm, or business – farm insurance agents are uniquely qualified to consider the human and business implications that effect you. Their solutions are tailor made to your needs.

Our web site offers information of value to you, whether you are a farm insurance agent yourself, whether you are considering becoming one, or if you are a farm/business owned wanting to know more about them.

Here are some recent posts that we’ve found that you might be interested in.

Financial Services Oversight Hearing on the Implementation of the … – Cameron Findlay, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Aon Corporation on behalf of The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers. Panel 3. Dr. Alan S. Blinder, Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Co-Director of …
fema, mema to offer insurance agents icc workshop - any interested insurance agents who want more information on the increased cost of compliance (icc) portion of flood insurance policies are invited to attend a free workshop on filing claims under the program.
ag addresses southeastern insurance association – attorney general martha coakley was the keynote speaker yesterday at the annual meeting of the metrosouth independent insurance agents association. the meeting was held at the shaws center in brockton. attorney general coakley spoke …
Irda may change commission structure of insurance agents – Money … – Irda may change commission structure of insurance agents, Currently, Life Insurance Corp. of India, or LIC, the country?s biggest insurer by premiums, pays commissions based on the tenure of the policy, Money Matters.
UNUM PROVIDENT UK US INSURANCE POLICIES: Insurance News … - StreetInsider.com (subscription), MI – 3 minutes ago. MAYFIELD VILLAGE, Ohio–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Independent insurance agents who want to grow their business by harnessing the power of the Progressive name need . …

Farm Insurance Agents and the Power of a Buy – Sell Agreement

admin — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:31:57 +0000

If it turns out that your offspring are not interested in sunning your farm or business into the next generation you have two options.

Option number one is for you to keep working forever (ok you may be able to find someone to rent it) until you simply wear out and die. At that point your widow (wives outlive husbands by an average of 10 years on the farm) can put it up for sale.

Option number two is for you to negotiate the sale of your place in advance, getting the best price and terms possible, so that your family’s financial future position is secured and known well in advance.

For most of those who choose Option #1 getting the maximum value for their lifetime of hard work is a pipe dream. Potential buyers will offer less than the farm/business is worth for a couple of very logical – to them, reasons. You will not be around to reason with them so what makes sense to the potential buyers is much more important that what your family may think is true.

Typically farm insurance agents have seen these unhappy scenarios play out again and again where people they know thought they were somehow special and the rules of nature and finance would not apply to them. People who learned, or at least their families learned, the truth the hard way.

If farming was easy, anybody could do it. Good years and bad years come and go with some farmers doing better than others during both the up years and the down. Your efforts and your knowledge are probably responsible for some of the profits and success you’ve had over the years.

If you’re no longer around, everything else being equal, your farm’s profits will shrink and the farm’s earning power will decline. In fact the farm, without you, may no longer exist as a going concern that produces income above what you could rent the land to a neighbor for.

If you have special knowledge and experience that produces fatter cattle, more milk per head, greater yields, etc. buyers will want to discount the price to or below the local rental value since you will not be available to provide your special insights to help them get the most from their investment.

Another problem is that the purchase price will be arrived at through negotiation, without you, allowing potential buyers to offer less than the asking price. The final price will be the result of a compromise reflecting the bargaining strength of both parties. Who do you think will have a stronger position, the potential buyer or your family, if you’re not around?

In most situations the potential buyers will have more leverage and so they will have more control of the final price and the terms. If your family also needs cash and the potential buyers know it, there may be a tremendous loss of total price in exchange for the cash your family needs desperately. Your family will inevitably receive less than the full value of what you’ve built.

Farm insurance agents know that there is a way, Option #2, where you can make sure your farm business is sold for what it’s really worth. That’s by doing your negotiations NOW while you’re in your best bargaining position.

You can seek out, maybe with your business accountant’s and lawyer’s help, interested purchasers and negotiate an agreement that will give your family the most possible dollars for your years of hard work. Naturally the best way to accomplish this is with a written contract that establishes the terms of sale – today, in advance of the day it will be needed.

Such a contract is called a Buy & Sell Agreement. It formalizes the procedure for transferring your interest over to new owners. It provides a smooth transition of ownership and minimizes lost business value.

If you are in business with one or more people a Buy & Sell Agreement is an absolute necessity. If one of you leaves the business it’s likely the others will want to continue. Isn’t that your situation? Wouldn’t you want to continue the farm if your partner left?

In fact, you and your partners probably have the same concerns. You both want full value for your interest if you leave and you want to take over the farm if they leave the business first.

If you are a sole owner you can enter into a Buy & Sell Agreement with a key employee, an outsider such the son of a neighboring farm owner, or even a competitor. If you are selling the buyer should not matter as long as the price is one you agree upon as fair, the terms fit your needs, and the buyer has the resources to make the payments.

So, where should you go to learn more about the ins and outs of Buy & Sell Agreements and how they can help you achieve your objectives? Farm insurance agents have access to the tools and the terms of agreements used successfully by other farm owners.

Farm insurance agents can also arrange for the financing of the agreement so that the buyer gets a huge discount, payments are only required while you are around to make sure they are being made, and farm insurance agents are the only people who will attend your or your partners funerals with a cashier’s check in their pocket for your and/or your family.

Farm Succession, Appoint a Planning Coordinator to Steer the Process

admin — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:48:30 +0000

If someone must be put in charge of the farm succession process who will keep mom and dad in the loop, keep the advisors moving forward, and keep an eye out for successful succession strategies being used by their peers for ideas that work – who should it be? The planning coordinator’s job is to ask questions, assemble information, talk with everyone involved, etc.

Click here to read the whole story.

How is Term Life Insurance Like Wetting The Bed?

admin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:31:59 +0000

You may not have thought of the comparison, but it’s accurate. Term life insurance is like wetting the bed because it provides immediate relief, but sooner or later you are going to have to get up and do something about it.

Because term life insurance is pure protection, providing only a death benefit, it is like renting the coverage for as long as the policy lasts or as long as you pay the premium. If you die during that time, the policy will pay its death benefit.

However, as you get older you see that while the original reason you bought the policy has gone away, it has invariably been replaced by another reason, usually one with an even higher price tag and even more dire consequences if you do not have the cash to satisfy it.

There are lots of different bells and whistles insurance companies add to make their term insurance policies salable.

For example, some have premiums that are level from the day you buy it until the end of the term. Since every year the actuarial cost of protection increases, the real corresponding costs your payments would rise each year, compared to the levelizeded premium term life insurance policy.

When your premiums rise according to the actual actuarial costs, if there was any chance that you could be convinced that you no longer needed the insurance, you would drop it in a heartbeat and the insurance company would not make as much money – because the early year premiums are lower than the later year premiums.

There is a “guaranteed renewable” feature in most term insurance policies – before or at the end of the initial term. Insurance companies have been selling insurance to people for a long time, and they know that your needs for insurance will last for as long as you live, and they want you to keep paying for insurance far beyond that initial term period.

The renewable feature’s primary benefit to you is that you don’t have to pass another physical to show that you are still “insurable” in order to keep the term insurance policy in force for longer that originally intended. In every term life insurance policy I’ve seen, each time you renew, the premiums will be higher for the next period of years than the last – because you are older and, therefore, more likely to die.

Another feature, convertibility, is usually part of the policy as well. In my opinion the convertibility feature is vital and something you should clearly understand in order to make sure the policy is as flexible as you will want it to be.

Convertibility is a feature that could be critically important to you. It allows you to exchange this policy for another type of life insurance at any time before the expiration of the policy’s term. By purchasing a convertible term life insurance policy you remain in control, the policy can be converted to a permanent type of coverage at a later time, and importantly – without having to prove that you are still insurable.

Here’s where my wetting the bed analogy comes in. Generally people choose term insurance for protection when they need it as a permanent solution for a temporary obligation, such as mortgage protection, bank loans and security required by a vendor, or perhaps as income replacement when their children are young. These are times when the requirements for immediate cash protection to meet your commitments is paramount if you were to die – and term insurance may only possible solution that provides the amount of coverage you need at a premium you can afford.

Over time the original loans get repaid – so you borrow more, kids grow into teenagers – now it’s their college education you want to assure. And as retirement nears – money is still going to be needed by the survivors, to meet expenses, pay taxes, etc.

In other words, term life insurance is a permanent solution for a temporary obligation. And it is a temporary solution for a permanent need.

The question most people ask is, in order to work out the right type of insurance for their specific situation – where can I get both the advice and input I need and the cost effective solution to the challenge of finding the right policy for me right now?

In my opinion, the right answer to that is one that makes the most sense both for you and your family but your business as well.

It’s finding an insurance agent who has spent a lifetime helping people like you. He or she will have insights and experiences to share that you can benefit from.

Remember, when you buy life insurance, commissions will be paid to someone – an online service, a web only company, or a flesh and blood agent. There is nothing you or I can do about that.

So, why not get your money’s worth by using the help of a trained professional you trust who has to look you in the eyes for as long as you all shall live?

When It Comes to Farm Succession Planning, You Must Be Willing to Ask For Help

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:05:15 +0000

Passing down the farm is a many faceted equation, and because it is unlikely that you have already been through it recently, it will require you to ask for help from those likely to know more than you. It includes elements of strategic planning, farm succession planning, and farm estate planning. Are you willing to set your ego aside and ask for help or not?

Farmers need to look at what’s working and what’s not in order to better understand which past, present, and future actions are the most likely to take their farm in the direction they want it to go. Add to that the creation of policies, practices, training, tactics, and actions that will result in your next generation being able to lead and manage the farm in the future. And putting it all together with the documents required to add the force of law necessary to ensure it all happens.

It goes without saying that no one knows all that needs knowing on their own, enough to cobble together all these elements in an overall process that will result in the seamless transition of your farm over the years to the next generation.

The $64,000 question, “Who should I ask for help?”

Farm Insurance Agents Understand Your Desire to Pass Down The Farm

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:15:12 +0000

Most farmers dream of the day when they can sit on the front porch and watch their son or daughter working the farm. After all that’s how it was for them wasn’t it? They took over the place from their father or uncle just like they had taken it over from those who came before them.

If that’s going to happen you really need to begin discussing the possibilities right now, today, with your offspring – all of them, those on the farm and those who’ve left.

You should start today talking it over with your spouse too. It’s true you know that wives outlive husbands on the farm by an average of ten years – so if you two don’t do the planning for what you agree is the best solution for your family, you widow will do it without you and maybe under conditions you swore would never happen.

If your kids are not going to farm, which is the traditional retirement plan for generations of farmers, you’re going to have to do something to get the maximum value out of all your hard work, so you and your spouse can live financially secure lives – with enough money to go visit those grand children.

And when you’re gone you’ll want to have enough so that each of your children can have a legacy of some sort. In cash.

Since you, if you are like most farmers, have 70-80% of everything you own tied up directly or indirectly in the farm and most of that is invested in land, buildings, livestock etc. – everything but cash, you are going to have to have a plan that converts the non-cash assets into cash.

The smart way, the most cost effective way, is to begin now while you are in your best bargaining position – to seek out potentially interested buyers and negotiate an agreement that will give your family the best possible return on your decades of hard work.

Farm insurance agents know all about this process. Often they know potential buyers you don’t know and sometimes they can be a sort of go-between to get the discussions started. Not in a formal way so much as in how they seem to know everything about everything that’s going on in the community.

And if there was any group of people who are universally known as being helpful and concerned about their neighbors its farm insurance agents.

As the discussions move forward from the informal to the concrete, the best way to nail down the terms and conditions of sale is through a written document, a contract which clearly establishes who is going to do what, when, and how they are going to do it.

The lawyers and farm insurance agents call this a buy-sell agreement.

Buy-sell agreements formalize the procedure for turning your farm over to new owners. It provides a seamless transition of ownership and management with little if any decrease in the value of the farm.

If you are in business with one or more other people I hope you already have a buy-sell agreement and will use this information as motivation to meet with your lawyer and your farm insurance agent to make sure it is up to date in from a valuation, terms, and conditions point of view.

And if you are a sole owner, maybe someone who originally thought they’d have a son or daughter following them by now – but for whom that has not turned out to be the case – a buy-sell agreement is the ideal tool with which to begin now to plan for a different owner of your farm in the next generation.

Maybe it’s the kid down the road whose parent’s farm is not big enough to absorb his brothers and sisters AND him. Farm insurance agents know people all over the area – maybe they know of a situation like that and can be instrumental in getting you together with this stranger who will become the next generation on your farm.

Here are a couple of ways buy-sell agreements can work. Farm insurance agents have briefcases full of examples like this and many others. Plus their insurance companies are overrun with tax and estate planning specialists who love helping their agents help people like you.

One is called the cross purchase method. Here the agreement is directly between the potential buyers and sellers. Each agrees that if he dies, retires, becomes disable, or otherwise leaves the farm – he or she will sell their interest to the others at a set price. It’s a simple arrangement to continue the farm and get your money out at the same time.

Another is the entity purchase method. In this situation the agreement requires the farm itself to buy the departing owners interest. The farm is continued by those who remain.

Needless to say your unique circumstances will dictate the best kind of buy-sell agreement for you and your family.

In either case your family and you are assured of the best price for your farm – because you did the negotiating of price, terms, conditions, etc. now, when you are in the strongest position you are likely ever to be in.

Farm Insurance Agents – When They Think of Insurance Who Are They Gonna Call?

admin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:00:59 +0000

In the movie it was the theme song that we remember after all these years. In fact if you Google the term “who you gonna call” you’ll see that 5,290,000 searches have been made on the term.

Partly I assume because it is a catchy tune but mostly because when our prospects have a problem and ask themselves, “who are we going to call to help us with this” we want their answer to immediately be us. We want them to think of our services first.

In fact we want to be so high up there in their consciousness that we are the only possible solution for the situation.

Recently the great sales training expert and author Jacques Werth wrote the following article which we are publishing here, that describes as only he can the power of relationships that create this sort of “front of mind” awareness.

Your Own Loyal Community of Prospects and Clients

Suppose you are watching a James Bond movie and 007 says to another character, “Tomorrow I am going to pick up my dream car.” If you know much about 007, you would immediately have a mind picture of a gleaming white Aston-Martin.

If you were not aware of the fictional James Bond character you would probably picture your own “dream car” whatever it is. Perhaps it’s a BMW, Caddy, Ferrari, or a Shelby-Mustang.

That is an example of a powerful marketing concept called “front of the mind awareness.” A refinement of that concept, which is applicable to excellent prospecting, is “favorable front of the mind awareness.”

Suppose you sell Life Insurance and Annuities and you have a list of six hundred people between the ages of forty and sixty who have a minimum net worth of $500,000. You call those people every three to four weeks, changing your prospecting offers every time you call. About seven percent of them will ask you not to call them anymore. That leaves you with over 550 prospects on your list.

If the way you prospect leaves those people feeling good about each call they receive from you, you will be developing “favorable front of the mind awareness” with about forty percent of them. That means that anytime they are exposed to cold calls, TV, radio, magazine and direct mail advertising about insurance or annuities, over 200 of them will immediately have favorable thoughts of you. Caution: It will not work if you use traditional “cold-calling” techniques.

“People buy in their own time, for their own reasons,” is another powerful sales concept. They do not buy because you need to make a sale this week. It is important that you are in frequent contact with your whole list so that you are there when they want to buy what you have to offer.

The more often they hear from you, provided that your calls are very brief, informative and free of any pressure, the greater positive affect your calls will have on your prospect list. It will continuously increase your prospects’ “favorable front of the mind awareness”.

One of the results of this approach is that nearly all of your appointments will be with people who want to buy what you have been offering them. After they become your clients, provided that you continue to call those at the same intervals, they will be loyal clients for years to come.

Jacques Werth
High Probability Selling

Here’s hoping your clients and prospects consider you as the first, best, and only solution to their “cash with bad things happens” solution.

Marketing Professional Services – The Two Most Challenging Roadblocks to Your Success

admin — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:00:59 +0000

From a marketing point of view – everything is about marketing isn’t it, those of us who are inside the circle where our prospective clients spend their time are the most effective at marketing their services.

During the thirty years I worked with business owners, marketing selling and delivering my services to them, 90% of them came from three related industries.

Everywhere I went they were there – people I did not know knew people I had done business with. People called me after seeing me at their trade association meeting ten times.

Read the entire piece here…

http://effectivenessstrategies.com/2009/03/marketing-professional-services-the-two-most-challenging-roadblocks-to-your-success/

When Farm Insurance Agents Bring Cash To The Funeral – The Farm Lives On

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:00:59 +0000

Farm insurance agents understand better than all the rest of your farm or business advisors put together that cash money delivered at the death of a key person is often the only thing that keeps your enterprise alive. They know that key person life insurance proceeds are likely to be the only money coming in at a time when so much money is going out.

The definition of key person life insurance varies, but in a nut shell it is life insurance designated to replace the loss of an individual whose value is important to the business. Typically this is meant to be someone other than the business owner, such as one or more employees whose role is important. These are the people you’d say, “I don’t know how we’d get along without…” and whom you will have to replace if they leave.

Who are your key people? Why don’t you make a list of your production team leaders, managers, supervisors, and other key people? Then ask yourself what would it mean to you if one or more of them, the valuable ones, left – died, quit, became disabled, etc. What would you do, would their loss effect profitability?

How exactly would you replace them if you had to do so all of a sudden? If they really are key people they must be replaced – because their important jobs must still get done by someone. Everybody else is already working flat out doing their own jobs.

How long will it take to find their replacement? How much will you have to pay the new person? Will it be more or less than you are paying your existing key person? How long will it take to train them and how much will training then cost? Who will train them and who will do their job while the training takes place?

The risks associated with having a key person stuck down with a long term illness or death, are real indeed. Farm insurance agents have charts and formulas that can put actual numbers together based on the loss your business will face in the event one or more of your key people leaves.

What are the odds, given the ages of your key people – that one or more of them will leave before you want them to? Farm insurance agents also have actuarial tables that will tell you the odds? When you understand the odds you can make the decision – can we afford to take the risk or should we insure some or all of it?

When you take the risk you are quite literally betting the farm on a roll of the dice. When you off-load the risk, paying a small fee to the farm insurance company, the farm is safe. If anybody loses it will be the insurance company.

Farm insurance agents can help you determine how much cash you will need to have instantly available, how much money the farm life insurance company will need to deliver, money neither you or the farm have to pay back.

In my opinion the best way to make sure you are protecting your farm business, your family and yourself is to work with an experienced farm insurance agent whose opinions you trust.

If you don’t know a farm insurance agent like that, ask a farmer or business owner like yourself, someone whose opinions have been solid help for you in the past.

Ask them for the name of farm insurance agents they have used that they are the happiest with. Then call the farm insurance agent and set up a time to get together!

And when you meet with them, honestly describe your situation and ask for their advice.

Farm Insurance Agents » Farm Insurance Agents

Successful Farm Insurance Agents Understand That Knowing Their Clients Is The Key

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Farm Insurance Agents in the News

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Farm Insurance Agents and the Power of a Buy – Sell Agreement

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Farm Succession, Appoint a Planning Coordinator to Steer the Process

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How is Term Life Insurance Like Wetting The Bed?

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When It Comes to Farm Succession Planning, You Must Be Willing to Ask For Help

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Farm Insurance Agents Understand Your Desire to Pass Down The Farm

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Farm Insurance Agents – When They Think of Insurance Who Are They Gonna Call?

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Marketing Professional Services – The Two Most Challenging Roadblocks to Your Success

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When Farm Insurance Agents Bring Cash To The Funeral – The Farm Lives On

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