Technology has already been enlisted extensively in the support of service. Cellphones and other wireless products have made customer service an anytime, anywhere proposition. Agencies as well as carriers are posting helpful consumer information on their Web sites, available 24/7. Software applications are making it much easier to construct and implement proactive client service timelines.

In turn, this has created higher consumer service expectations. To borrow a phrase from physics, the speed and breadth of technology have altered the space-time in which business occurs, shortening the time consumers are willing to wait for service and making geography a much less relevant factor. For those agencies and carriers best able to adapt, service opportunities will continue to proliferate.

What about the impact of technology on the sales side? In the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Harrison Ford is suddenly confronted by a menacing figure who proceeds to brandish his sword, putting the weapon through all sorts of gyrations and flourishes as Indiana Jones watches. After letting the threatening bad guy do his thing for a while, Indiana calmly reaches down, pulls out a pistol and promptly brings his opponents performance to a close. Ah, technology at work.

So, how can you as an agent take advantage of technology to strengthen your selling prowess? Think of your pre-call strategy, for example. The Internet is the single most rapid expansion of conveniently available information in human history. There are all sorts of ways, many of them free, to do research on your prospects, their industries and their competitive situation before your initial appointment.

Typically, for all but very small companies, the net will yield enough data to give you the size, structure and mission of the prospects business. For public companies, of course, a wealth of information is available online from the required documents they file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

With a little ingenuity and clicking skill, you can find an array of helpful free sites and articles. Even if you decide to pay for research, you can usually acquire it by making a relatively small investment as a percentage of your sales acquisition costs.

But wait! We need to return to the earlier point. Before you conclude that all it takes is whiz-bang technical toys and real-time information from the Web to make you a million-dollar producer, a strong word of caution is warranted.

Access to technology has become so widespread that it is already losing its differentiating potency. It is becoming merely one more strength on the list of strengths that all insurance agencies and brokerages will soon boast they have.

As this occurs, real differentiation will continue to lie in individual people and the proactive service they provide. In the final analysis, your sales achievement in the insurance business will reflect your ability to identify your prospects unmet needs and meet them. Technology cannot do that for you.

In a free-market economy, success comes to those who genuinely provide something of value to the people who pay them. If you want to wedge out your competition, if you want to differentiate yourself, if you want to find your prospects pain and relieve it, and if you want to serve your clients so well that renewal becomes a non-issue, then let me leave you with two bits of advice.

First, enjoy the technology, but stay focused on the real people with whom youre dealing.

Second, keep your sales skills honed. The next time you lose a deal, it will not be because you didnt make enough cell phone calls or send enough e-mail. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault, dear agent, will lie not in your technology, but in yourself.

Technology has not reduced the need for human interaction. To the contrary, because it has increased the number of prospects that you and competing agents can efficiently contact, it has made your own selling skills more important then ever.

Randy Schwantz is president of The Wedge Group in Argyle, Texas. He is the author of “The Wedge: How To Stop Selling and Start Winning” and “Breaking The Sales Barrier: How To Develop Million Dollar Producers,” both published by The National Underwriter Company, parent of this magazine. The books can be purchased online at www.NationalUnderwriter.com.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, July 14, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.