Cost advantages: Are you competitive, cost-wise? More important, when your customer weighs the premium charged against the coverage and service received, are you viewed as an excellent value?

Are your payment terms flexible? Can you offer a low down payment? Do you offer pay-as-you-go monthly self-audits or discounts for payment in full?

Can your client receive premium dividends in return for good loss experience? Can your customers' profitability or cash flow be enhanced with retrospectively rated or paid-loss plans? Can you offer large deductibles or self-insurance options to reduce clients' premiums?

If you are the product, how do you separate yourself from the competition?

Order-taker versus consultative agent: As an order-taker, your product is the efficient processing of requests for service or coverage. Do you handle orders quickly, accurately and with good cheer? That's the best way to separate yourself from other order-takers.

Perhaps your sales approach is consultative. That makes your product the ability to listen to buyers and understand their problems, priorities and values. Do you ask questions that tie your product's strengths to your prospect's interests? Asking questions and listening separates top achieving agents from the others-especially from order-takers.

Insurance negotiator: Do clients and prospects view you as their insurance negotiator, or are you simply seen as someone who gets quotes? Do you have permission to negotiate cost and insurance terms, or the authority to bind coverage? When you position yourself as an insurance negotiator, you sit beside your buyer as a teammate, not across the table as an adversary.

Risk manager: Does your professional support include risk-management options? What are those options? How do they help make a client more profitable, competitive or safe?

Niche industry specialist: Is your product a specialization in trucking, agribusiness, construction or another industry niche? Are you an authority on coverage for that niche? How active are you within your niche industry's associations? How do you get the word out that you are an industry specialist? Do you write articles to educate customers and attract prospects? Do you speak at industry seminars or meetings?

Coverage/product expert: Is your product a specialization in surety bonds, professional liability, workers compensation or other lines of insurance? Have you taken advance training to improve your expertise? Have you committed yourself to earning a professional designation? Are you a life-long learner of insurance, policy terms, and real-world applications of your products?

Create a list of problems that you, your agency and insurance companies have solved for customers. Be specific. Have you ever delivered a death benefit check to a widow? Have you ever assured the survival of a family's lifestyle with a well-designed disability insurance program? How have the products and services you've provided to clients improved the quality of their lives?

Are you known for quick responses to customer requests? Do you manage insurance programs effectively, so clients can focus on generating revenue instead of resolving insurance problems?

What service, coverage or pricing problems have you fixed? If you're not sure, ask your CSRs, account executives or account managers. Solving problems for customers is what they do all day long. Then find prospects with similar problems. Why? Because you have someone back at the office who knows how to solve them!

When you are the product, you know your cost, coverage and service advantages “cold” and can communicate them to clients and prospects. You know what problems you solve for others and how you improve the quality of their lives. You know how you separate yourself from the competition. Most of all, you truly believe that you are the product!

Ed Lamont, CIC, teaches Dynamics of Selling for the National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research. He presents professional selling, sales management, and customer service programs for insurance associations, national brokers, and insurance agencies. Contact Ed at (561) 737-7388 or by e-mail: [email protected]. For more information about Dynamics of Selling call (800) 633-2165 or visit www.thenationalalliance.com