Are there Insurance Agents using GTD or other simailar sales professions?

[tmuir]

In dealing with the daily volume, if every new client is a project with 20 or so steps to completion, and there are numerous customer serivice issues each day, and very little is done away from the computer, does it make sense to categorize the time blocks set aside for dealing with stuff.

Such as New Biz, Customer Serivce, Questions for Underwriting, Email, Phone Calls, Marketing.

Each new biz is a project list. Marketing all starts as projects.

I feel like I would have two tabs for each category, one for the projects and one for the NA's. I could easily be up to 16 tabs.

If I put everything on the list as I collect it the volume and randomness makes it pretty difficult to pull out the priorities.

It gets scary opening up the NA page and having to choose form such a huge volume ot NA's.

I also have all the different lines of biz that I work on in blocks of time, personal lines, commercial, life, financial services.

Again lumping all the NA's into one list @computer/desk is overwhelming.

 

[tmuir]

I also have all the different lines of biz that I work on in blocks of time, personal lines, commercial, life, financial services.

Again lumping all the NA's into one list @computer/desk is overwhelming.

 

[ommoran]

I also have all the different lines of biz that I work on in blocks of time, personal lines, commercial, life, financial services.

Again lumping all the NA's into one list @computer/desk is overwhelming.

Does an independent adjuster count? I'm our manager, and have responsiblities for customer service (claims handling), sales (new claims for all staff), plus admin, etc.

I have found that my best choice is to list my Projects - all of them - under Projects. Need to call an underwriter on a particular project? Don't put it on the next action for that project, put it on your calls list. Projects should list just that, and your various lists should show the next physical action for that project. When you review your project list, you will make sure that you have a NA for each project somewhere.

Send me a PM, and we can discuss further via e-mail - I am happy to help as I am myself still setting up my system.

 

[Vramin]

A small request...

Send me a PM, and we can discuss further via e-mail - I am happy to help as I am myself still setting up my system.

I would love it if this conversation could stay public if at all possible. That's the beauty of a forum, many can benefit from the experience of one.

 

[Eutychus]

an insurance agent new to GTD

I am an insurance agent, new to GTD (not new at all to insurance). I finally just got fed up with stuff falling through the cracks. Nothing major so far...but always worrying whether I left something important undone.

I have several companies and do not at present use an agency system. I haven't found one that does any better than my contact manager (Act 2006).

However, this lends itself well, I think to GTD. Especially concerning clients and prospects. I have a customized layout that includes exdates for various lines, next action, etc. A simple audit gives me all the next actions including exdates for both clients and prospects for print out or for paging through the contacts one by one where I have the next action and major future actions, plus history and phone numbers etc. ready for the next call or action.

Not all clients/prospects have activities going on at once. And there can only be one next action per client. Each client is a project and therefore there are a lot of things that can be done for each. However there is only one next action. I wonder if you are listing too many items per client?

Note: I know something about insurance, but haven't a clue about GTD so don't take these ramblings too seriously.

Best wishes,

 

[tmuir]

to all

Thanks for the replies.

My goal is to get out of decsion by panic, the days are running me instead of the other way around.

We have tried to stay paper based for our sales book / record (excell was too out of site out of mind even on the desktop and could'd make it a habit) to track the progress of each client through a new sale and then rely on the companies (Farmers) customer management system (like a primitive version of ACT and a work in progress) to schedule the ongoing relationship and marketing activities. I used to use ACT but the double entry once into the company system and again to ACT is too redundant for me.

My prospects book is also paper for tracking clients up to the close and again using the company system for future follow up on xdates not ready yet or lost sales.

My challenge is keeping that next action list small enough to not be overwhelming and trying to force some some order to it. Contextually 90%of everything is done at the computer. So I'm thinking breaking it down between lines of business, personal, commercial, life etc. and then sales vs customer service, marketing, and then again by phone calls.

It all gets to be a too many categories. Agendas could include a lot of phone calls, phone calls could have agendas and then I'm looking in two or more places during the time block I have set for making calls.

Thinking outloud here,
Each line of biz is like an umbrella project with each client being its own project. Reviewing the lines of biz for the time blocks set aside for that I can pick among the active clients too choose NA's for the day or week. Same goes for other porjects like marketing etc.

That way the bulk of NA's are in Projects and only the reasonably achieveable stuff goes into the GTD notebook w/ NA's, agendas, etc. But if all the NA's are already in the Lnie of Biz project book and I workout of those in time blocks why pull the NA's out and put them in the GTD book?

Then I'm back to not over doing it with sub categories in NA's.

I like the Einstein quote "make it as simple as it needs to be but not simpler". Very challenging for me too apply to this system.

 

[Eutychus]

aren't they really already in the GTD system?

Thinking outloud here,
Each line of biz is like an umbrella project with each client being its own project. Reviewing the lines of biz for the time blocks set aside for that I can pick among the active clients too choose NA's for the day or week. Same goes for other porjects like marketing etc.

That way the bulk of NA's are in Projects and only the reasonably achieveable stuff goes into the GTD notebook w/ NA's, agendas, etc. But if all the NA's are already in the Lnie of Biz project book and I workout of those in time blocks why pull the NA's out and put them in the GTD book?

The line of business categories or files are extensions of GTD and therefore already in the GTD system. As long as there are single actionable next steps written where you can easily review them you are in the system. There is no need to list them twice. (Also, the fact that on completing one action you go on to three others is not a problem.)

Sounds like you are doing mostly commercial, where the underwriting (and quoting) from line to line can be dramatically different even with the same client. I can see a good advantage here to setting up blocks of time for each line as you are doing.

My current book is primarily personal lines. I treat each client as a project and tend to underwrite as a package. I categorize actions as: actions, calls, delegate, wait, etc. and operate from there. All this and expiration dates (trigering new sales activity or renewal processing) are handled via a single contact manager.

GTD is the first sytem I have seen that gives me hope of integrating the whole.

Best wishes,