Life Insurance Selling January 01, 2009

Features

• Is Your Clients' Coverage Up to Par?

  By Maureen Baxter

  Every client needs to plan and set financial goals. Those goals usually evolve as time goes on, however, and plans may have to change to accommodate them. No one can predict the future, and life events can occur

• Turn Gold Into Liquid: Helping Business Owners Transition Into Retirement

  By Michael P. Hatch

  Many financial advisors have thought longingly about working in the often lucrative, closely held business owner market. Given the entrepreneurial wave that has swept the United States in the last 30 to 40 years, many

• Communicating the Value of Disability Financial Planning

  By Robert G. Taylor

  In these troubling economic times, the headlines are dominated by stories of individuals and families struggling to manage unprecedented challenges to their financial well-being that they never anticipated and most

• Longevity Annuities Could Redefine the Retirement Income Planning Landscape

  By John L. Olsen

  Risk, like many other four-letter words, describes something unpleasant to be avoided if possible. Unlike most, however, it denotes something that is not well understood.Finance textbooks speak of many kinds of risk

• Minimizing Federal Estate Taxes: Advantages of an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust

  By Angela M. Wethor

  Although some states may exclude life insurance proceeds from death taxes, the IRS does not. For federal estate tax purposes, a taxable estate includes virtually anything that is owned at death, including death

• Whose Retirement Is It?

  By Stephanie J. Curry

  As we approach retirement, the process of generating lifetime income while balancing the desire to leave a legacy for our heirs becomes the focus of retirement planning. Traditionally, retirement was expected to last

• Billions of Dollars of Maturing U.S. Savings Bonds Are Creating a Not-So-Tender Tax Trap

  By Jack Quinn

  If you're an estate, retirement, or financial planner who would like to be able to redirect monies before they get paid to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by uninformed seniors and instead, reposition those

• The Experience Myth

  By Benson F. Smith

  This article is excerpted from Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World's Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers, by Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano, Copyright 2003 by the Gallup Organization (Warner Business Books).In some

• Split-Funded Defined Benefit Plans: Meeting the Needs of Small Business Owners

  By Rex Ritchie

  As a very diverse population, small business owners each have their own unique needs. Despite this diversity, however, small business owners tend to share common goals: avoid unnecessary taxes, retire with as much

• Developing A System of Success to Grow Your Business

  By Howard B. Cowan

  As general agents, we are all striving for the same end goal - growing a successful business. How each of us reaches that end goal differs greatly based on a variety of factors ranging from our past experiences,

• Financial Independence: A Public Service Initiative

  By Sarah Spear

  The Need for Financial LiteracyGovernment officials, educators, and broadly diverse civic organizations agree on the need to increase the financial literacy of the American public. Ranging from our school children to

• Open My Own Business o NOW?

  By Joseph R. Cardamone

  Despite what you might think, starting your own business in a recession offers opportunities.Often, the monotony of punching the clock as someone else's employee leads to day dreams of starting a business and

Columns

• What's Going On: Advances in Medical Testing Benefits Underwriting

  By Gordon Bess

  Even this math-challenged editor can define the most famous equation in physics -- "energy equals mass times the speed of light squared," or E=MC2. Did you know that life underwriters operate under a

• Hoe: Off With Their Heads!

  By Richard Hoe

  In October, I wrote about capitulation. In November, I capitulated. My customers were out of the market for a week, and some more than a week. Why? Investing is both art and science. The art comes from education and

• Saltzman: The Moynihan Argument

  By David A. Saltzman

  It's all over but the inauguration, and what an historic event it will be. Regardless of your politics, you would certifiably have a heart -- and perhaps a mind -- of stone to be unmoved by what will

• Postscript: Marketing: For the Fun of It

  By Douglas E. Richards

  Our industry and nation are facing a grave crisis. I am alarmed to look around offices and see all the stiff demeanors, starched shirts, and stoic faces carrying the weight of the world. I'm writing this in my

• Oh Happy Day!

  By Burt Meisel

  Think positive! Negative thoughts will not get you anywhere, except in reverse. Negative thoughts may sometimes haunt your mind, but you can decide to cast them out.Think positively and enthusiastically, and on that

Departments

• Sales Sizzlers: Be a Center of Influence to Centers of Influence

  By Adam Sachs

  I would like to share something that had a big impact on me when I first started some 15 years ago. I was working with a young couple who wanted to buy life insurance. It was one of my first sales, and I was excited