C-Suite Network™

Troy Korsgaden

In the business world, an inflection point happens at a critical moment when the situation calls for new thinking and a different strategy. Troy Korsgaden—a highly sought-after insurance and financial services consultant, speaker, and the author of seven books—believes this is that moment for the insurance and financial industry. Previous assumptions about the way we do business are no longer accurate. His warning is that if we don’t see the need to change—and change now—many of us will lose customers…and perhaps lose our businesses.

This book will guide you to adapt your insurance or financial services agency to reach and serve customers in the ways they want to do business. Troy Korsgaden shares a blueprint for a new business model to set your firm up for success in today’s rapidly changing environment.

Take a hard look at your role, firm, or carrier as it is today, and ask yourself, “Where am I now?” and “How did I get here?” Take a rigorously honest approach when looking at your business. What have you done right, and what could have been done better? Are you poised for the future? What areas could you improve? In what areas do you thrive? When is the last time you retooled any of your procedures or workflows? Many professionals show up every day without a real plan, and their schedules are dictated by the brushfires that flare up during the day. They don’t have a defined and purposeful schedule to guide them. Don’t let that be you!

Start today, setting up your firm for success. Create an action plan to retool everyone and everything within your agency or firm. The bottom line is to have a seamless ecosystem at the firm level and/or the carrier level. Think of it like a digital experience. You enter through the main hub, and when you are offered a different product, most of the time you feel you’ve left the hub. It feels odd and uncomfortable because the process has suddenly become complicated. Our task is to create a reality for our customers in which they never feel they’ve left our hub.

To ride the new wave in our culture and our industry, you need to create a network that blends excellent customer experience, a wide array of options in your offerings, and the creation of expertise partners to whom you can refer your customers who need products and services you don’t currently offer.

Jeff Brandeis

There are many books available to teach you techniques for closing a sale (meaning bringing a new client on board to your firm), and this book does an outstanding job of that. In fact, you will be amazed at how practical these sales techniques are and how immediately successful they will be for you. Whether you are bringing a new client onboard or selling additional services to an existing client – it is all about sales. You may be the best technical CPA but that will not help you grow your practice. Building relationships and trust will. The biggest thing that sets this book apart from all the rest is that it talks about what happens after you close a sale. Through the techniques given in this book, you’ll have the ability to open a relationship and turn a first-time customer into a customer for life. As a sales professional, my goal should be to make you a customer for life – and my actions will reflect that. Instead of just using slick gimmicks or sales formulas, I’ll treat you with integrity. I’ll be earnestly working to identify and understand your needs in order to help you find the best fit with the services or products my firm offers. I’ll be BECOMING A RAINMAKER: A GUIDE FOR ACCOUNTANTS AND CPAs striving to create a relationship of trust and rapport, resulting in a genuine desire to bring out the best in everyone. This may very well become your favorite sales book, or possibly even the first one you ever read. (And yes, even a CPA/Accountant is in sales.) It has the potential to change the way you sell and make you more successful than you ever imagined. It combines research with practical strategies that really work. We are excited that you have chosen to give us a chance to help you prove it! Your complete satisfaction is our future! Jeff Brandeis & David Bergstein CPA

Rob Pascale

Millions of baby boomers are just beginning to retire, and in doing so many are likely to run into adjustment problems, such as loss of identity, deterioration of marriage and social life, and feelings of disconnectedness to the world. Studies have found that as many as 40% of retirees have difficulty adjusting, and even those who claim to enjoy retirement may experience some uneasiness as they adapt to a life lacking in structure and direction.

This book investigates the struggles faced by retirees in building a new life outside of the workforce. It provides an honest assessment of retirement, based on the not-always-acknowledged fact that it is a difficult transition with pitfalls and obstacles to be overcome.

But along with uncovering problems, the authors also propose solutions to enable both current and future retirees to be better prepared, allowing them to avoid being blind-sided by unexpected situations. By reading about the experiences of their peers, current and future retirees will come to understand that others share their difficulties adjusting, and that tactics are available to improve their comfort level in retirement as well as their overall well-being. Retirees and those planning for retirement will find in these pages what they need to make retirement successful and enjoyable.