Schedule - by Type
GAMA International Presents
Leadership: Gateway to the Future
LAMP 2008
Leadership and Management Program
San Francisco
March 16–19, 2008
Leading Practices Program Tracks
Development
Diversity
Leadership & Culture
Practice Management
Recruiting & Selection
Retention
Sales & Marketing
LOTT
Continuing Education: LAMP attendance and participation qualifies for up to 20 hours of PACE credit to maintain designations awarded by The American College. Information on obtaining PACE credit will be available at Registration.
Development
13. Grow Your Agency to Greatness
  
Development
Monday, March 17
2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
Robert A. Arzt, CLU ChFC LLIF
Polaris One &
InsuranceCoachU.com
Robert Ashton
First Command
Kerry L. Lawing
Ohio National
“If I knew then what I know now.” How often have you said those words? This workshop will enhance your leadership skills to allow you to build a strong organizational culture. Bob and several successful managers will present an enlightening discussion of best practices for agency development and management. They’ll teach you what has worked for them in providing leadership and inspiration to their organizations — and what hasn’t. Learn what actions were necessary to address their firms’ continued growth and enable the companies to more effectively plan, manage and execute their missions and objectives.
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 22. Make Leadership Development a Top Priority
Development
Tuesday, March 18
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Scott D. Butler, CLU ChFC
Northwestern Mutual
Growing leadership talent to support the organization’s growth is the most important and challenging role for leaders. Move leadership development into your important/ urgent quadrant by using a leadership system of accountability, balance and development. Scott will show you how leadership development promotes abundance, increases production and recruiting, improves retention and allows leaders to keep their promise of support by providing a healthy span of control. You’ll learn how to build a leadership culture, set expectations and accountability systems for developing leaders, develop role-modeling activities and create a compelling vision for growth, as well as how to use Scott’s shared staffing model.
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 23. Launching New Agents and Increasing Senior Agent Productivity
Development
Tuesday, March 18
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Clifford P. Karthauser, CLU ChFC, and Gary Karthauser, CLU ChFC
The Principal Financial Group
Master Agency Award
Cliff and Gary will share the partnership approach they take with their most successful producers and, with strategic coaching, use to help them reach new levels of productivity. They will show you how to help advisors with specific business and marketing plans, taking into consideration the current state of the producer’s practice, his or her willingness to change what needs to be changed and commitment to execute the plan with built-in accountabilities. You will learn how to develop the synergy necessary to keep the momentum going and how to build in rewards that will keep advisors motivated to achieve the results they are looking for.
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Diversity
 17. Get WISE about Attracting, Developing and Supporting Female Advisors
Diversity
Monday, March 17
2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
Sherri L. DuMond, CFP RHU
Securian Financial Group
Fifty-one percent of the population is female. Does your firm or office reflect this demographic? In this session, you will learn how to attract quality women to your firm and share ideas on how to support the professional development of female advisors. Topics of discussion include: best practices for recruiting women, how to “speak” to women, what’s important to them, best practices for developing women and how to create a “female-friendly” environment for your firm. Sherri, the Securian director for Women’s Interactive Sales Exchange (WISE), will also give you an overview of industry statistics and information on women’s markets.
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Leadership & Culture
 1. Building the Right Culture for Your Agency
Leadership & Culture
Monday, March 17
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Ronald C. Dickstein, CLTC
John Hancock Financial Network
How do your advisors and staff feel about coming to work every day? Do you know? The culture of your organization can make you or break you. And it starts at the top, with you. What are you doing to make yours the firm of choice? People want to be part of something great, and you are responsible for making it so. Learn how to set the tone for your firm and establish an agency and a recruiting culture. Find out what the all-important “little” things are and how to implement them. Culture is critical to the success of an organization. Long-term success is doomed without it!
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 3. Hidden Curriculum: Acronym — “A.G.E.N.T. P.O.W.E.R.”
Leadership & Culture
Monday, March 17
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Norman G. Levine, CLU ChFC RFC
Levine Enterprises
GAMA International Hall of Fame 1982
Learn how to help your associates increase their productivity, have more fun … and better serve their clients. Norm will show you how to coach your advisors on such topics as prospecting, sales skills, client relationships, developing trust with clients, empowerment and yes, even recreation, so that you can turn your advisors from product pushers to financial advisors, while at the same time increasing their productivity and service to your clients. Use the 10 steps in A.G.E.N.T. P.O.W.E.R. to take your firm to the next level.
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 8. Culture Can Make You or Break You
Leadership & Culture
Monday, March 17
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Leo C. Tucker, Jr., CLU
Northwestern Mutual
Master Agency Award
In a fast-changing industry, there is one constant that can make or break your agency: your culture. Successful agency culture helps in recruiting and developing representatives; poor agency culture can undermine even the best of intentions. Leo will present an agency case study and guide you through the process of becoming aware of your current culture and making sure this culture aligns with your vision. Learn how culture is defined, measured and changed. You will also leave the presentation with the techniques you need to change your culture and the tools that will keep you on track.
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 14. The Power of Purpose
Leadership & Culture
Monday, March 17
2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
James L. Cook, ChFC CFS
National Life Group
Master Agency Award
Can you change the world? Jim believes you can, and he’ll show you how in this session. The key to creating a cohesive organizational structure and building a Master Agency is purpose, both professional and personal. Jim tells the story of how one man of purpose may very well have changed the course of the Civil War. He’ll show you how to apply that same concept to your practice, how to differentiate between “good fear” and “bad fear” and how to build strong foundations for top producers by identifying the 14 key skills inherent in successful producers.
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 15. Recipe for a Retreat
Leadership & Culture
Monday, March 17
2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
Daralee Barbera, CFP CLF CMFC, and Mark Larsen, CFP CMFC
Waddell & Reed Financial Services
IMA Silver
Go ahead! Take a day off! Get away from the office, but why not take your entire team? “Recipe for a Retreat” will walk you through the steps to a profitable day away. Learn how to define multiple retreat goals; choose a theme; and organize a planning committee, activities and logistics. Spending a day away from the office looking at business issues allows retreat participants to see the big picture, drill down into details and view the subject from different angles. The result: successful team building, greater camaraderie and a new focus on profitability.
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 19. Build on Your Advisors’ Strengths
Leadership & Culture
Tuesday, March 18
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Jeff Engebose, CLU ChFC CFP CASL CRPC
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans
Forget working on weaknesses! Research shows that a weakness can’t be converted to a strength. So help your advisors discover their strengths with a “strength finder” quiz you can use to coach to their strong points. In this session, you will learn how to build a team around complementary skill sets and why you shouldn’t try to make your advisors more like you but more like themselves. By focusing on each advisor’s individual areas of strength, you can help them raise their energy levels and, ultimately, their business results.
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 21. Changing Minds
Leadership & Culture
Tuesday, March 18
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Thomas J. Hosmanek, CLU CFFM FICF LUTCF
Modern Woodmen of America
IMA Silver
Learn how to move your management team to a recruiting mindset where recruiting really is “Job #1” and becomes a daily activity! Tom will share the techniques, experiences and activity-based tools that he used to measure, monitor and reward these changes as he accomplished this transformation within himself and his leadership group.
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Practice Management
 5. You, Too, Can Have It All!
Practice management
Monday, March 17
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Gregory Manto
AXA Equitable
Who says you can’t have it all? If you follow Greg’s advice, you can actually be a top producer and a top manager, too. Greg will share his proven practices for branding, sales, ensuring uniformity of culture, developing and rewarding associates, balancing production and management and much more. Find out how when you hire people who will be with you forever and raise the bar continuously for peak performance, you can develop your associates, continue to serve your clients and increase your own production.
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 6. Building High-Performance Adviser Teams (From the GAMA Foundation)
Practice Management
Monday, March 17
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Patrick A. Ungashick, CLU ChFC
Securian Financial Group
Patrick will share his expertise on how to build an organization supported by advisor teams and discuss what the findings from the GAMA Foundation’s Building High-Performance Adviser Teams both taught him and confirmed for him.
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  7. Reinvent Practices for Growth
Practice Management
Monday, March 17
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Mark Dean and Mathew L. Rauh, Jr.
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans
IMA Diamond
Do you want to learn how to build a long-lasting and sustainable, growing, vibrant practice that delivers a new level of client satisfaction? Leveraging research on how various firms have grown, Mark has created a system that helps leaders focus on how to bring added value to a practice. He will introduce you to the concepts and tools that are critical for execution while bringing in real-life examples of what has worked and what hasn’t. The session will feature discussions on leading practices that deliver double-digit growth while driving improved retention.
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 12. Building High-Performance Adviser Teams (From the GAMA Foundation)
Practice Management
Monday, March 17
2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
Shawn P. Smith, LUTCF
Farm Bureau Financial Services
IMA Gold
Shawn will share his expertise on how to build a multiline organization supported by advisor teams and discuss what the findings from the GAMA Foundation’s Building High-Performance Adviser Teams both taught him and confirmed for him.
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 18. BAM Will Kick Your Business Up a Notch
Practice Management
Monday, March 17
2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
Mark Michael Rooney, CLU ChFC CFP
AXA Equitable
Master Agency Award
Mark tells clients, “People don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.” Mark sells planning as a fundamental piece of all his firm’s activities. However, firms in the insurance and financial services industry generally don’t plan well for their own practices. And, like clients who do not plan well, they are worse off for it. BAM (Business and Market) Planning is a five-step way to better build and develop a practice. In this session, you’ll learn how to establish appropriate goals with reasoned expectations, convert your goals to necessary tasks, apply the tasks intelligently to targeted markets, use effective time management to complete all tasks and create accountability.
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 24. Top Ten Reasons for Considering Fee-Based Planning
Practice Management
Tuesday, March 18
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Salvatore J. Durso
Securian Financial Group
IMA Silver
Sal will explain how his firm used a structured process to build a financial planning resource firm that not only allows advisors to build financial plans for their clients, but also retain them for a fee each year. His firm’s values-based financial planning approach brings his advisors closer to their clients and proves that relationships really do make a difference. Clients working with The Centennial Group’s financial planning resource center account for three times more commission compensation than the firm’s average sale and create ongoing revenue and client loyalty. Find out how Sal’s firm succeeds with its unique approach.
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 28. The System Is the Solution
Practice Management
Tuesday, March 18
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Charles R. Parks, CLU ChFC
The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company
IMA Platinum
Ad-libbing is for amateurs! Great vision precedes great achievement, and spectacular performance is always preceded by preparation — in other words, the right system. Charlie will reignite your passion for bringing new people into this great business of ours. He’ll teach you how to grow your firm organically rather than by hiring industry retreads and to build a management team to multiply your capabilities. He’ll cover his seven-step recruiting process, testing procedures, record keeping and training, as well as the systems he uses and how he implements them.
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Recruiting & Selection
 4. The Recruiting “On and Off” Switch
Recruiting & Selection
Monday, March 17
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Luis O. Barrionuevo, CLU ChFC LUTCF
The Principal Financial Group
IMA Gold
Where is the recruiting “on and off” switch: how do you know when a candidate is right for your firm? Lou will show you the whens, wheres and hows of recruiting that ensure the continued growth of your organization. This presentation will cover different resources that are effective in today’s financial services arena and everything from timelines to presentation flow. You’ll learn how to uncover the “hot” buttons of any potential recruit and the qualities to look for, as well as the habits and comments that should raise red flags. Lou will include a motivational section on the “right attitude” about recruiting.
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 10. Competing for Sales Talent in a New World
Recruiting & Selection
Monday, March 17
2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
Rick Funke
LIMRA International
In today’s competitive business environment, it is more critical than ever that you are equipped with the latest and most effective ways to find the best sales talent for your firm. In this session, you will gain current, cutting-edge information and techniques that will increase the effectiveness of your recruiting program. LIMRA’s Rick Funke will present up-to-date research findings on recruiting trends in the financial services industry, as well as tell you how to connect with candidates from different generations. You will leave the session with concrete recruiting skills and techniques that you can implement and integrate into your own process.
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  26. Get the Appointment … and Improve Retention … through Effective Phone Coaching
Recruiting & Selection
Gail B. Goodman
ConsulTel, Inc.
Paul Blanco, LUTCF
MetLife
Most agencies lose associates because they don’t have enough “activity” — in other words, appointments. This presentation will show how the management team can improve the teaching and coaching of phone skills, thereby giving the new recruit a better chance at success. Because sales training outranks phone training by hundreds of hours, the average salesperson will instinctively use “sales language” instead of “phone language.” This presentation will focus on the manager’s role in teaching better appointment-setting phone skills during the first 90 days of a new associate’s career. Gail will discuss call reluctance, provide a simple structure for scripts and response handling and make suggestions on ways to structure your agency so that phone skills are a priority.
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Retention
 25. Keeping the Right People (From the GAMA Foundation)
Retention
Tuesday, March 18
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Harry P. Hoopis, CLU ChFC
Northwestern Mutual
GAMA International Hall of Fame 2003
Some firms achieve retention rates of 70 percent or more. How do they do it? Harry will tell you what the GAMA Foundation research study, Keeping the Right People, found out from top field leaders.
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Sales & Marketing
 2. Reaching the Right People: Marketing Locally for Maximum Impact (From the GAMA Foundation)
Sales & Marketing
Monday, March 17
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Athan Vorilas, CLU CLTC CMFC
The Prudential Insurance Company of America
IMA Diamond
Learn how this Master Agency is using the GAMA Foundation’s Reaching the Right People: Marketing Locally for Maximum Impact to market at the local level.
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 9. Unlocking the Code: How to Get Multiline Agents to Write More Life Insurance
Sales & Marketing
Monday, March 17
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Raymond J. Vendetti, CLU ChFC
American National Insurance Company
The skills advisors need to sell property and casualty policies are different from those necessary to sell life insurance. Ray will take you through a simple series of skill-building steps that can significantly improve your life insurance interviewing skills. With these new skills, multiline advisors will be able to open life discussions on most contacts with their clients and prospects. Beginning with several paradigms that exist in the multiline arena, you’ll learn how associates can get to the “feeling” level with clients and how to begin a life insurance and financial planning interview. You’ll also learn how to overcome the two most common objections multiline agents hear: “I’m all set” and “I have it at work.”
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 11. Super-Charge Your Recruiting Through Your Own Networking Organization
Sales & Marketing
Monday, March 17
2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
Joseph W. Tucciarone, CFP
Guardian Life Insurance Company of America
IMA Diamond
Today’s networking groups have become a method of choice for both experienced and inexperienced agents. Every day, various networking groups are meeting. But have you thought about creating your own? Building your own networking group is a logical step for any agency. The value you can gain from it is enormous, both in recruiting and branding. In this session, you’ll learn why you should build a networking organization, how to use it for recruiting, the financial issues related to building a networking group and the secrets to marketing and branding your agency through your networking group.
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 16. Client Reviews Increase Client Retention and Profitability
Sales & Marketing
Monday, March 17
2:50 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
John Natoli, CLU ChFC CFP CLF CMFC
MassMutual Financial Group
CDA Diamond
Associates often focus on prospecting and finding where the next client will come from, as this is the lifeblood of building a successful financial services practice. Often overlooked in this quest for new business are their clients, yet clients are the best source of new sales and referrals. John will explain the process and importance of client reviews in cultivating the existing client relationship; in identifying, discussing and implementing additional needs; and in obtaining referrals. He’ll debunk the myth that you need hundreds of clients to start a client review system and share the successful client review system his firm uses.
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 20. Development of a Quarterly Marketing Event Process: Beating the Cross-Selling Blues
Sales & Marketing
Tuesday, March 18
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Christopher P. O’Connell
Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company
IMA Gold
Are you tired of having associates miss cross-selling opportunities? Are your advisors stuck in call reluctance? Have they stopped doing annual reviews? Why don’t they manage the names they have? Beat the cross-selling blues with a quarterly marketing event process. This system encourages agents to cross-sell to group health, property and casualty clients and provides a platform for consistent annual reviews. Each section includes a detailed conversation about the system used to hook agents into activities that produce consistent results.
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  27. Marketing for Margin: The Better the Bigger!
Sales & Marketing
Tuesday, March 18
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Maria Umbach, CLU FLMI, and
Jerry Harnik, CLU
Guardian Life Insurance Company of America
This session will help you understand and apply the principles of marketing, as contrasted with selling, to avoid the trap of commoditization and improve your bottom line. A well-thought-out marketing strategy will increase productivity in your agency, improve your recruiting and retention efforts and ultimately help you and your producers to confidently sustain better business results. Maria will offer insights about acquiring the right marketing talent and recognizing it as a business asset versus an expense. She will also offer prototype marketing plans and key questions that will stimulate your thinking about your own unique value proposition. A case study from one of the most successful agencies in the country will be featured.
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LOTT - Leaders of Today and Tomorrow
 29. LOTT (Leaders of Today and Tomorrow)
Michael R. White, CLU ChFC
Securian Financial Group
IMA Diamond
Tuesday, March 18
2:50 p.m. – 4:50 p.m.
Whether your firm is large or small, is it built to last in the 21st century? Don’t miss this special workshop for managers in development and transition. Mike White will show you how to leverage resources, research and leading practices to maximize your professional development and catapult your career.
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