Think about it.  How would you characterize the most recent selling paradigms we’ve seen over the past few decades.  As a B2B sales guy since 1988, I’d say I’ve seen three distinct era’s in 20+ years, certainly with convergence and overlap.  Generally speaking…

1. 80′s / early 90′s – Relationship selling
2. early/mid 90′s – Solution-oriented selling
3. late 90′s, 2000′s – CRM-based selling

What do you remember about the pro’s and con’s of these earlier phases?  What struggles did you have adapting to the changing paradigms?  Any funny anecdotes that come to mind relative to this?  How would you characterize what we’re seeing now with Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs and their impact on sales?  Consumer/Client rating?  Retweets, ShareThis, Recommendations?  Email marketing?  Podcasting?  Viral video?  Content syndication?

My own funny story… I remember when I was selling for ADP in Phoenix around ’91/92, a couple years into it, I got my first laptop and bought a copy of ACT!  That year I made President’s Club for the first time – a really big deal for me just starting out trying to establish myself as a capable sales guy.  Relative to my small patch in east Mesa on the rural areas to the east (Globe, Payson, Show Low) the tools definitely helped me get to the next level.  But I now had a new challenge.  “Where the frickin’ OUTLET around here???? I need a POWER SUPPLY for my laptop!!!” :-)  So much for McDonalds – not outlets!

Stories? Thoughts?

Selling from a hotel room at a conference.

December started out in a whirlwind followed by an almost complete 2-week vacation from work, something I desperately needed.  Thus the quiet period relative to blogging.

On the Agent-driven side of the house (versus association and affinity)… MyAgencyCenter focus…

Based on my travels and discussions in the early part of December, I remain convinced that local insurance agents can create a self-generating lead system – cheaply and sustainable.  Those seem to be the two keys in this market.  The solution needs to be an affordable, pay-as-you-go subscription model and easy to support with a simple weekly schedule of agent activity.  However, the tricky part is the agent Web site.  With the compliance requirements of insurance companies and regulators, and the complexities of insurance quote engines, agent Web sites that are meaningful lead engines for the agents are a real conundrum.  They have to be professional, up to date, useful for the prospect, and thus able to move the visitor from the cloud to the funnel.  At a bare minimum, the site needs to reinforce the agent’s reputation in the marketplace as a committed insurance professional.  MyAgencyCenter, in combination with social media strategies, seems to be the solution.  For now, my focus is on MGA’s, IMO’s, career and captive agencies, insurance companies with W-2 agents, and other similar large organizations.  (Sorry, MyAgencyCenter is not quite ready to serve individual agents or small agencies.)

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Blog Consulting

So I finally got my first paid consulting gig helping another insurance marketing organization get started with a blog strategy!  I’m pretty excited about it.  Of course, it’s a covert op at this point, but I’m hoping it will become overt later in the year as the blogs mature and the client becomes more comfortable with the environment. Let me know if you feel motivated to start your own.  I can’t recommend it highly enough…

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Sidebar – Priceline.com rocks.  Might be ‘old news’, but I’ve developed an affinity for it with all the budget cuts.  Just gotta say that I’ve saved a ton on air and car rentals – without much adverse impact on convenience, I must say.  Let me know if you’d like some tips.  What about you?  How do you save money with travel expenses?  Any neat ideas?  Please comment.

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PIMA 2010 Annual Meeting in three weeks in the Florida Keys

In collaboration with Bill Tyson and Sherri Lagana, as well as pointers from Rick Jones, conference tri-chair and Mona Buckley, PIMA CEO, I’m working hard on the panel discussion “Demystifying Social Media”.  It’s a tall order for a 45-minute session, but I’m working with some really smart and savvy people.  The interesting thing that we’re netting out to is that, once you get into the social media game, it’s really not that mysterious. I’d be interested in your comments.

And the other really neat thing is that each Social Media program within each organization will likely be, by very nature, unique and different based on the people and products of the organization.  And lastly, unlike Web sites and the tendency for CIO’s and IT departments to hijack what should be primarily simple marketing projects, Social Media strategies and the execution there-of are clearly destined to be managed by sales and marketing (of course, in collaboration with IT and Compliance as appropriate).

Look for a Social Media survey in the next week or so.  And yes, I’ll be taking interesting pictures.  Smile… but don’t look at the camera if you don’t have to!

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While I’m on the Social Media topic, here’s a very useful aside.  Do you have a Social Media ‘Policy’ for your organization?  A couple months ago, I collaborated with a very savvy group of insurance marketers on the P&C side of the business.  Let by Jeff Yates and the IIABA ACT subgroup, we developed a helpful guide for establishing a Social Media Policy for an organization.  Again, Social Media Strategies will vary by organization (let me know if you need help with that), so it’s not a cookie-cutter thing.  SM Policies will vary.  But the guide will help you cover most if not all of the must-haves for an effective policy.  Also find it HERE, another great blog.  I’d be interested in any feedback as it’s by nature a ‘living’ document.

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ICMG 2010 Annual Meeting in Tucson

Looking a little further out, ICMG is coming up on the heels of PIMA.  (Btw, I’m glad Mona and Audrey make the effort to collaborate on the scheduling of these two very important events as there is significant overlap, especially on the vendor side of the equation.)  Last year’s meeting was a record-breaker.  It will be interesting to see if this year will surpass.  I know I’ve seen a lot of new members signing up over the course of 2009.  But 2009 was a rough year as well, so we’ll see.  I’m looking forward to connecting with folks about MyAgencyCenter as well as about Web sites, insurance technologies like quote engines, e-applications, agent portals, and single or multi-carrier agent contracting solutions.  As always, there will be ample things to talk about and great opportunities to connect needs and solutions, whether they are mine or not.  And oh yeah, I’ll be taking cool pictures.  Might even do a vid-cast.

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Next: Final Reflections on 2009 and Forecasts for 2010 – A podcast with the legendary Mark M. Hill

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A few final pictures from 2009

I had a pro-shooter take a picture of me at the NCAA College Cup, the Men’s Division 1 soccer equivalent of the basketball Final Four.  Thought it came out well.  My team lost a heart-breaker though.  Very long trip back to CLE, lemme tell ya.

A picture of a pricelsss gift I made for my buddy Dave Recchion that moved to North Carolina in 2008.

A picture of Kelle with her favorite Christmas present.

And a pic of me and Zach at the Hudson Chapel Saturday morning Men’s Bible Study.  (Btw, speaking of technology, check out what my church is doing with a .TV site… simple and creative, and very cool use of Social Media.  And it’s a great church group if you’re looking for one.)  I also made a short and sweet music vid over the holidays trying to capture my year in the study…

1. Best of PIMA award went to Marsh.  More on that in a future podcast (I hope).

2. IdeaStar’s client, Forrest T. Jones, won the top Gold Award for E-Commerce Web sites, surpassing some great sites by AON and others.

Ftj.com is absolutely a ground-breaking site.  See the White Paper I helped write here.  Phenomenal site.  Kudo’s to the entire team that worked on.  From the early e-business readiness consulting work that Mark Seghers did, through the diligent, competent, and persevering efforts of the FTJ team (Fred & Debbie and others), including the IdeaStar team (Mary, Brent, Phil, Wayne and others), all the way to winning the award and beyond.  Simply outstanding efforts and results.  Matrix-driven architecture with content management is a great solution for multi-carrier, multi-product, multi-association, multi-state education, quoting, and enrollment.  Only way to go circa 2009.

3. A long-time attendee approached me and said, “Mike, I’m finally ready to do a blog.  And I want my CEO to do one also…”  Cool.

An amazing event on several levels.  I found it remarkable that something I brought up at the Stoweflake resort in the summer of 2007 finally yielded some fruit.  And I’m flattered and gratified that he came to me.  Very very cool.

4. Favorite bit of content from the podium – Randa Zalman from Redstone

The decision is not ‘whether or not’ to participate in social media.  It’s HOW to participate.

Social Media is a marathon not a sprint. – good quip for the book I’m writing.

Great story about customer service and addressing the customer through social media, turning the relationship around, finding out about a service issue with the rep and a management issue with the rep’s boss – all because they were monitoring social media and then addressed the issue that was raised by the customer.  Great story.

Anything more than 2 minutes is boring.

5. Sound bites for a music video to open a panel discussion at the next PIMA Annual Meeting called “Demystifying Social Media”

The audience at the annual meeting will be the executives, so in general the bosses of the folks at MarkeTTech.  With notable exceptions, the exec’s are generally crossing their arms and rejecting social media and social networks.  But their people are using the tools and definitely see opportunity for insurance marketing.  So my hope is that with sound bites and corresponding images, we’ll arrive at a short (<2min!), punchy opener that grabs the execs.

Any comments on this post are welcome.  Do you think Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin) and Social Media (Blogs, YouTube, etc.) are relevant to the distribution of insurance in the affinity and association markets?

Grace Parrish, Rick Jones, me, Fred Hron

missing: Debbie Hamilton, Mary Zupancic, Phil Hall