Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2019

Update Your Chrome Browser “Right This Minute”

This week’s TechTip is a Public Service Announcement (PSA) for those of you who are using the Chrome browser.

Several security researchers identified a “Serious Chrome zero-day” vulnerability. This just means that there is a vulnerability in the Chrome browser that hackers could exploit to gain access to your computer.

A zero-day threat is a threat that exploits an unknown computer security vulnerability. The term is derived from the age of the exploit, which takes place before or on the first (or “zeroth”) day of a developer’s awareness of the exploit or bug … Attackers exploit zero-day vulnerabilities through different vectors.

How to Check for the Latest Chrome Browser Update

It’s quite simple to take a look and make sure your Chrome browser has been updated to the latest version which fixes the problem.

“Operationalizing Sales and Marketing: First Steps for Insurance Agents – Episode 049”
by Steve Anderson and Ryan Deeds

Sorry, listening to the audio on this website requires Flash support in your browser. You can try playing the MP3 file directly by clicking here.

Operationalizing Sales and Marketing: First Steps for Insurance Agents – Episode 049
March 12, 2019

Summary:

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Steve and Ryan talk about sales and marketing as an operational process. By listening to this episode, you will learn:

How the sales and marketing processes differ, and where they intertwine
How the processes tend to fall apart in the absence of operational oversight
How an operational makeover of sales and marketing makes the processes sustainable, repeatable, and scalable, ensuring growth and the survival of the agency

The Digital Broker podcast is brought to you buy Indio Technologies. Indio turns the application and renewal process into an online TurboTax like experience for your clients. As a result, the 1,000+ agents using Indio provide their clients with a top-rated customer experience, reduce their E&O exposure, and outgrow their competition. To learn more about Indio, click here!

Recap:

Though we’ll talk about sales and marketing as a single process, they ought to be defined differently. Marketing is the process by which you identify leads and prospects—people who might have an interest in what you’re selling. Sales is everything you do after that to get a check.

Here, we won’t be so concerned with how to market or sell better, but rather the operational aspect of either process. How do you integrate sales and marketing into your agency’s operations so that the process is more sustainable, repeatable, and scalable?

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Posted on Thursday, March 7, 2019

The Perils of Using Internet Explorer as Your Default Browser

When Microsoft released Windows 10 nearly four years ago, it included a new updated and modern browser called Edge. While Internet Explorer lived on due to some underlying code in Windows and for compatibility with legacy business websites, Microsoft no longer provides updates for Internet Explorer when new web standards are released.

That’s a problem for the insurance industry.

Way too many insurance companies and technology vendors require the use of Internet Explorer to make their websites and web platforms fully functional.

Microsoft has tried some different ways to push businesses to improve their older web apps but, unfortunately, IT administrators have naturally taken the easy route of continuing to rely on Internet Explorer and its various compatibility modes.

“Making Goals Happen: Strategic Planning for Insurance Agencies – Episode 048”
by Steve Anderson and Ryan Deeds

Sorry, listening to the audio on this website requires Flash support in your browser. You can try playing the MP3 file directly by clicking here.

Making Goals Happen: Strategic Planning for Insurance Agencies – Episode 048
March 5, 2019

Summary:

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Steve and Ryan talk about goals and strategic planning. By listening to this episode, you will learn:

What kinds of goals insurance agencies typically set for themselves
Why goals break down in the absence of strategic planning
How strategic planning works and how it helps you achieve your goals, even in the face of unexpected change

Recap:

Are you familiar with the following scenario? You’re in an all-hands meeting to discuss the future of the agency: how are you going to grow revenue, cut losses, overhaul certain routines and make space for new ones? Your employees are sharing ideas, setting benchmarks for themselves. Goals are emerging. You commit the agency to achieve some of them within three to five years. Everybody’s on board. They leave the meeting feeling good about themselves and their work.

Come to the end of the fiscal year, it’s like the meeting never even happened. You’re no closer to achieving your goals than you were before the meeting started. Why? Everybody seemed so excited and sincere!

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Posted on Thursday, February 28, 2019

Can You Spot When You’re Being Phished?

Maybe the better question is: “Agency owners, how sure are you that your staff can spot a phishing email in their inbox?”

Phishing attacks continue to be a genuine problem for all organizations both large and small. Insurance agencies are not immune.

It can be harder than you think to identify a phishing email. Phishing is an attempt to trick the email recipient into giving up personal information by pretending to be someone you know. The real question then becomes, “Can you tell a fake email from a real email?”

Phishing is bad, but it’s not always easy to determine what might be a sketchy email and what might be a legitimate one. To help, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) subsidiary Jigsaw has made a quiz to help teach people how to spot malicious emails better.