You're in the insurance business, and you're searching for a breakthrough. Maybe you're a new agent and feel overwhelmed by the task ahead of you. Or maybe you've already been in the business for several years, and you're doing pretty well, but you've hit a plateau. Whatever the case, you're looking for a way to put your business on the path to continuous growth. If this sounds like you, you're in the right place. The Breakthrough Insurance Agency shows you how to build a successful agency from the ground up. Moreover, it gives you the keys to break out of the stagnation rut many agents fall into after they're established. Using his acclaimed agency-building process, top insurance agent Bart Baker walks you through the ten key steps of creating an agency that give you the results you've been dreaming of. You'll learn how to set a powerful vision for your business, fund continuous growth, maximize your success with the 3M Breakthrough System and the Gap Elimination Process, set up departments that work, structure a compensation plan that serves you and your employees, and ultimately transform your agency from a quote shop into a referral shop. It doesn't matter what stage of the game you're at. As long as you are truly motivated to create a bigger and better future for yourself, you can shave years and years off of your journey to getting you and your family to where you aspire to be. The Breakthrough Insurance Agency will show you how to make it happen."

Darren Sugiyama, nationally known author and business consultant has disclosed the secrets of his insurance industry success. His story will amuse and inspire you to take your company to the next level. Proven results...every time!

Advance praise for Service Innovation: "To the CEOs of all service companies I deal with: READ THIS BOOK!" -- Dave Wascha, senior director, Bing Product Management, Microsoft Corporation "Lance Bettencourt deftly blends his academic and consulting experience to provide an example-rich, readable, practical, and innovative discussion of service innovation." -- Leonard Berry, coauthor of Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic "Provides the robust framework to design services that unlock growth opportunities for every business." -- Lance Reschke, vice president, Ceridian Corporation "The tools and guidance in this book will inspire companies, small and large, to create effective and innovative services that are desperately needed." -- Mary Jo Bitner, Ph.D., W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, and coauthor of Services Marketing: Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm "Cracks the code from the fuzzy front end through the complete life cycle of Service Innovation." -- Angelo Rago, division vice president, Global Customer Services, Abbott Medical Optics "Filled with rich examples of how firms can innovate service through helping customers get jobs done." -- Stephen W. Brown, Ph.D., W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University "Any leader intent on providing distinctive value to customers must read Service Innovation." -- Michael Reynolds, staff vice president, Commercial Marketing, WellPoint, Inc. If there’s one truism about the service sector, it's that businesses don't succeed by inventing a better mousetrap; they succeed by finding the best, most cost-effective way to get rid of their customers' mice. In industries ranging from heavy machinery to health care to financial services to consumer goods, service innovation is helping businesses find new revenue streams--and enhance existing ones--by satisfying their customer's need to get things done. Few understand this better than Lance Bettencourt, a strategy adviser at Strategyn and a leading educator in management innovation consulting. And in Service Innovation, Bettencourt gives a master's class on the art and science of creating breakthrough service products. True service innovation demands that you shift the focus away from the solution and back to the customer. To achieve this shift in your business--one that takes you from making educated guesses to building a clear model to guide service innovation--Bettencourt instructs on the finer points of how to rethink your approach to the customer's needs: how the customer defines value in a product or service. Bettencourt mines nearly 20 years' experience in teaching and advising clients with service- and product-dominant businesses to demonstrate proven ways you can build, streamline, and focus your company's service product innovation processes. Among the numerous key ideas and practices are: Insight on understanding the different types of clients you serve—and how your products deliver value to them Ways to design specific frameworks for discovering service innovation opportunities for new, improved, and supplementary service products Practical guidance on staying focused on the "fuzzy front end" of service innovation The fundamental elements of a winning service strategy Finding new ways to help people solve problems and get things done is why there are goods and services in the first place. And in Service Innovation, Lance Bettencourt fills a vital need by delivering the essential guide that can put your business on the latest frontier of value creation.

Finally, a book just for multiline agents! Like any mission to space, the launch of your multiline agency is highly choreographed with many time- and sequence-dependent actions that need to happen at an exact time or within a tight launch window. You must develop and follow a specific flight plan. Nothing should be left to chance. Whether you are a new agent or an experienced veteran agent, Prepare to Launch contains your flight plan for success! You will learn time-tested and proven strategies developed just for multiple-line agents. Here are just some of the valuable and easy-to-implement strategies you will learn in this book that you can start using in your agency today: - Use the author's breakthrough marketing tool, MAC, to become a valuable partner to real estate agents and loan officers. - Start winning back the ground our industry has lost to direct writers by focusing on the significant value you provide to consumers. - Connect with prospects instead of just communicating with them. - Invest in staff to take care of office tasks so you can focus on production. - Steer price-seekers to the why conversation. - Request preferrals-preferred referrals-in every client meeting. - And much, much more! The T-10 steps in this book are the key to mission success in your multiline agency!

Dispelling the myth that innovation is invention & revolution, this text argues that innovators past & present have employed a strategy of technology brokering to source, develop & exploit new ideas. It provides a clear set of recommendations for managing the innovation process in organizations.

Wasting time in pointless meetings....It's the bane of work life-and the one thing that never seems to change. But meetings can be highly effective, says Martin Murphy, who has helped a "Who's Who" of corporate clients transform timesapping meetings into "breakthrough sessions" that are truly productive. His strategy is not simply to speed them up or make them more palatable with flashier facilitation. Rather, the key is to upend the entire concept of meetings. That means throwing out traditional protocols and using one of four new collaboration models to get more done, faster than ever before. These sessions address: Issues management: identify, rank, and resolve issues-promoting critical concerns to Action Plan status * Problem solving: thirty-minute sessions for solving complex problems * Innovation: discover the billion-dollar idea that lurks in every organization * Strategic planning: stripped-down protocols for the kind of ongoing, realtime planning required in today's fast-paced economy In an era when innovation and speed-to-market rule, No More Pointless Meetings leverages the creativity and knowledge of an organization's people-a potent resource that conventional meetings ignore.