You’ve just bought a new car. Feeling carefree and mighty pleased with yourself, you enjoy the drive home. Upon backing into the driveway to park, however, your brain plays a trick on you, and just as in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” somehow you accidentally hit the wrong pedal when you intend to park. Your brand new, beautiful car lunges through the garage at top speed and out through the backwall, which unfortunately is on the edge of a ravine. More unfortunately, your new car goes over the edge at top speed and lands horribly across trees and rocks, contorting the vehicle’s frame, crumpling the rear end.

Lucky for you the car was going backwards, pointing at the street down the driveway, so you’ve landed without a scrape, in a mostly vertical position, nose pointed to sky after your gaffe with the pedals. But once freed of your not-so-new-looking car peering down from the edge of the ravine at the damage, you see how your car has fared: Totaled!

Just to add insult to injury, the back wall of your house looks like a tank blasted through it with bits of insulation and framing sticking out haphazardly. All this only minutes after driving your new car off the lot without a care in the world!

Who ya gonna call?

Insurance Saves the Day

If you’ve planned well, you’ll simply pick up the phone to your insurance agency. If not, you’ll remember the old adage about closing the barn door after the horses have left. It’s a little late to purchase your insurance policies after a disaster.

Few of us are willing to gamble with our personal lives, choosing to insure our most valuable assets: Life, limb, home and vehicles. Are you willing to gamble with the success of your business? Are you reducing risk by putting in place proven marketing systems?

Marketing Tactics that Produce Results

On “Marcia’s Medleys,” I spoke with Richard Goertzen, Sr. Representative with Liberty Mutual Insurance, about his 25 years with Liberty Mutual (for which they’re sending him to Boston later this month for a celebration at HQ) and how he’s built a thriving insurance business in Sonoma. Richard answered key questions about his marketing strategy and unique selling proposition that get results, including:

1. How multi-channel and affinity marketing strategies grow his business;
2. Liberty Mutual’s unique offerings that set them apart from the competition;
3. How he builds word-of-mouth referrals, using business networks like BNI;
4. The importance of putting customers first and letting them know you care; and
5. What consumers should know when they shop for insurance.

Click the Play button above to hear the replay of the broadcast.  Or reduce your risk of wasting time and jump to one of the discussion sections listed below. You’ll improve your chances of not ending up at the bottom of a ravine.