Happy New Year 2009! Welcome again to the time of year when hope springs eternal, new horizons beckon, the errors of the past are sworn to be overcome, and the future's so bright, we have to wear shades.

Or is it? For those of us in the financial segment of the economy, there are quite a few of those "errors of the past sworn to be overcome"–can you spell A-I-G? Insurance once again gets the bad press, we are all thrown together in broad-brush accusations against our industry, and pundits everywhere rush to pile on. Add in the softest market even grizzled veterans can remember, and things can seem downright ugly.Thus many of you can be forgiven if your mood is closer to a "third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous" than "good day, sunshine."But I'm here to say, "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone!" Where losers see sour grapes, winners see fresh wine. And this is the perfect time of year to set aside droughts and plan for future harvests. May I humbly suggest a modest duo of coverage-based seeds you can begin planting now in your own fertile fields?Focus on the disaster, not the details. For many years, insurance marketing (and education) has been caught up in "look at all the stuff we cover now." In both personal and commercial (and health), the focus has been on ever broader coverage, illustrated by ever less-important claims. For example, in extolling the virtues of the HO-3 over the HO-2, such issues as spilled paint cans and scorched counters took center stage to loss of the entire structure. In auto, great angst was expended on crushed fenders, matching paint and diminution of value, rather than crushed cars. In commercial classes, it sometimes seemed the building itself was forgotten in the battles over personal property located on vehicles or within 100 feet of the building.The result is many insurance folks, and by extension consumers, majored on the minor and totally lost track of the key purpose of protection: surviving disasters, not everyday scratches and scrapes. Ironically, those emphasizing minor loss scenarios as a plus for coverage seemed oblivious to the growing paranoia among insureds (grounded in reality) that turning in small claims to insurers was basically a guarantee of nonrenewal.And isn't this the perfect time to bring that message to your clients and prospects? In an economy where everyone is focused on bigger bang for their bucks and preservation of capital, risk management rises to its true potential. Talk not of selling insurance–focus instead on conserving capital with wise application of resources. When confronted by financially fearful folks who understandably are thinking they need to cut back on protection, refocus them on their biggest risks of loss. For example, short-term thinkers suggest lowering limits to save on out-of-pocket costs. The same reasoning should lead to suggesting smaller deductibles to lessen the impact of future out-of-pocket costs at time of claim.Yet both approaches are dead wrong. Today's economy requires clients to refocus their protection priorities. While the nickel-and-dime losses clearly will hurt, with limited access to other financial resources, clients risk being totally crushed by a truly catastrophic loss–California fires, anyone? Thus, now is the time to focus not on lower, but higher limits for all coverage lines. How to pay for those higher limits? A renewed emphasis on retention (including higher deductibles) and avoidance (stop risky behaviors) will pay dividends in insurance programs just as they are regaining their luster in other financial areas of concern.Focus on feeling, not features. In Insurance 101, we all learned one of the key reasons people buy insurance is a good night's sleep. What better time than this economic retrenching to suggest a return to this basic motivator of human choice?This leads us away from focusing with insureds on the latest coverage bells and whistles (wonder how popular PAP gap coverage will be if no one is over-financing cars) to the more crucial question, "What keeps you up at night?"Notice, sales buffs, this does not take coverage out of the equation, just moves it to its proper place–as a solution to be offered, not a product to be sold.For example, while our industry relies on tons of statistics to determine what products most folks may buy, every therapist and counselor knows individual fears, reasonable or not, drive individual decisions. For example, many people have specific fears due to a personal experience. I found it much easier to discuss the benefits of life insurance with someone who had dealt with such a loss. A client once explained his need for high umbrella limits with an emotional recounting of a friend who had lost everything to a "fluke" error that resulted in a crippling lawsuit. I personally have recounted to any number of seminars my own awakening to the critical need for flood coverage, even on a residence located miles from any water in a flood-map-designated non-high-hazard area. Let's just say boating to my home (that very residence) for three weeks changed my perspective.If you encounter customers who use such reasoning not to buy certain coverage, I offer two suggestions.1. Move along, nothing to see here. If they truly have no fear of a certain loss, there are literally dozens of other possibilities to offer. Don't argue, stick to the question: If that doesn't keep them up at night enough to act on a solution, what does?2. Offer as an example something that keeps you awake. Great storytellers have a secret: They know their jobs are only to start the story. Once hooked into the emotion, the listener will finish it–with their own stories. It's the emotion, not the detail. I can't tell you how many times I have offered my flood example, and then had a student come up to me with, "You think that was bad? Let me tell you what happened to us!"And once you know their fears, the benefit of knowing your coverage details becomes apparent: You realize you have solutions. Not theoretical from a class or textbook, but real, fact-based tools to address real, emotion-based fears of loss. Tie in your solutions with their needs, and in this economic climate you move your services from adding to their many burdens to lightening their load.There's no question that at this moment in time, many feel our economy, and industry, are experiencing the "winter of our discontent." Yet these suggestions are but two of many possible seeds worthy of planting even in this time of frozen credit, falling prices, faltering firms and federal bailouts. Join your hard-learned and valued coverage knowledge with a return to the roots of this great industry: the reduction of anxiety and fear of the future, while facilitating the taking of measured risk in the present.For those of us who see amid even these dark and cold fields the possibility of a future harvest, perhaps no one sang it better than the Divine Miss M–Bette Midler–in her classic "The Rose.""Just remember, in the winter/far beneath the bitter snows/lies the seed that with the sun's love/in the spring, becomes the rose."Plant. Believe. Happy New Year.