Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin: Put This…
Update News for August 2005
Here is a quick run-down on the upcoming changes:
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New Office Address
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Tell Us About Your PDA
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Marketing Program – Take the “Dare to Compare” challenge
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Referral Program – Referral Fees $10
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Keeping track of Multiple Clients
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Addition of Another Web Server
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Next Monthly Update
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These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin. We would encourage you to read on.
179 Snowdrop Crescent
Kitchener, Ontario N2E 4G9
We are actually dividing the old office into two new, smaller offices. Here is how it will work:
Compulife office manager Donna Jackson will be moving the main office to her home in Kitchener and programmer Chris Bruner will be moving his office to his new farm. Chris’s decision to buy the farm was contingent on being able to have his office there. Given the downsizing that we had been planning due to the elimination of disk distribution, we agreed at which point Donna pointed out that her new home has more than adequate space in her basement for her part of the operation. We have already confirmed that Donna’s home can receive insurance courier, so we are all set.
Needless to say, this new arrangement will be much more convenient for our Canadian staff and is one of the reasons we have been able to recently cut our software prices.
Phone numbers will be unchanged.
Needless to say, we are new to the PDA market. We would like to share with you what we think we have learned so far, and invite you to tell us what you think or know.
First, there appears to be two main streams of PDA’s:
1. Palm Pilots offered by Palm Inc.
2. HP, Dell, Siemens, etc. (just about everyone else)
who are all running Windows Mobile 2003, second edition.
Based upon our initial research, Palm products appear to be to the PDA market what Apple computers are to the desktop/laptop market. The only PDAs that run the Palm operating system are Palms. The rest appear to use “Windows Mobile 2003, second edition” which is the mobile variation of the Microsoft Windows program.
QUESTION: If you have a PDA, what are you using? What is the make and model? How much memory does it have? Will it accept SD memory sticks?
Send us an e-mail and tell us all about it:
IMPORTANT: You will notice that Compulife does not develop software for Apple computers. If you are using a Palm, don’t be shocked if we decide to NOT offer software for the Palm. Therefore, if you are using a Palm, it is absolutely VITAL that you tell us NOW. If it turns out that there are a large number of existing subscribers using Palms, then we may look into offering both Palm AND Windows Mobile software. If we do not hear from many subscribers about the Palm PDA, consider that option a dead duck.
Imagine, if you will, the entire Compulife program on something that is an oversized calculator with a 3 1/2″ color screen that you operate with a plastic stylus (pen). Imagine this is in your suit pocket or on a holster on your belt. Imagine that you take it out in front of your client, enter in your client’s birthdate, face amount, etc., click a button and get an insurance comparison much as you do now. Now imagine turning that PDA around, showing it to your client where he can see the insurance comparison on screen. You can then tell him what company you like, touch your stylus/pen to that company on screen, and have the product’s detail appear (premiums modes, renewals, etc.).
Do you think that would be useful in a sale?
What if you could do all that and it didn’t cost you anything other than about $100 to $150 for the hardware?
What if you could do all that if Compulife provided that additional software FREE with your current subscription?
What is that additional software used the same data files that you now receive each month from Compulife, so when you update your PC, you have also received the necessary update for your PDA?
Is there any interest out there?
We long ago learned that as a small, “niche market” software company, that it is important to NOT be on the bleeding edge of technology. While we have from time to time had calls about software for Palms, we could not see the point in engineering software for these devices. There were expensive and limited.
Having now reviewed the new crop of Microsoft Mobile 2003 devices, we are now of the view that the time may have come to move into this market. Given what we have learned, we believe if you don’t own a PDA today, you will likely own one in the not too distant future.
The immediate question is, “How many subscribers already own PDAs?” For those who don’t own them, “How many like the sound of what we are talking about?” Before moving forward we need to hear from you. Please write and tell us what you think:
Therefore, one of the immediate changes that we plan to make to accommodate these units is to come up with alternate web pages for our term4sale.com web site which will allow consumers to get on-line term quotes formatted for their PDA screens. Look for that to be one of the first changes that we make to accommodate wireless PDAs.
Like we said, if you don’t own one now, we think the day is coming where you will. For that reason we plan to develop software for these devices. The issue is how quickly we move forward with the project. That’s were you come in. You can help us determine how quickly we need to move forward by giving us feedback. Don’t forget to write us at:
Take the “Dare to Compare” Challenge
In order to give these prospective new users sufficient time to see the impact of our software on their sales, we are offering 30 day trial users the opportunity to extend the 30 day free trial to a FREE 4 month Personal Use subscription.
You can read more about this offer by going to:
www.compulife.com/daretocomparecanada.htm
Many of You are Missing Out On This Opportunity!!!!
During July I received a call from one of our oldest subscribers (he’s not old; he’s just had our system for a very long time). The subscriber complained that a competing General Agent was offering our software to his agents for FREE for FOUR MONTHS. He was ticked off thinking I had given a special deal to one of his competitors, and not to him.
Ooooppppsss…
The competitor simply “PAID ATTENTION” to this MAGNIFICENT OPPORTUNITY which has just gotten TWICE AS GOOD. The subscriber who called missed out on just how good a deal this is.
So here it is again, and please read carefully the offer that we are making to new prospective users. MORE IMPORTANT, consider carefully the offer that we are making to you to refer people to get FREE SOFTWARE.
To review, if you refer a prospect to Compulife, and that prospective user completes the “Dare to Compare” challenge, Compulife will give your prospect a FREE 4 month subscription and send you a credit coupon for $10.
IMPORTANT: It doesn’t matter if the prospect buys our software. For you to earn $10 they must do the tutorial (10 minutes tops) in order to get the FREE 4 months. Once again, if they do the tutorial, and get the 4 FREE MONTHS of software, you get your $10.
QUESTION: What agent do you know, who sells term insurance, who wouldn’t want a FREE 4 month subscription to Compulife? And what agent that you know, who would benefit from that, would not want to hear about that offer from you. NO ONE! So, if you don’t tell them about it, and earn for yourself $10, I suspect someone else will.
In order for you to make the referral, send us an e-mail with the referral’s name and address. Make sure you provide us with your name and address. Your referral will be sent a 30 day free trial and your e-mail will be placed into a 30 day trial folder. If the prospect gets their challenge completed by the end of 30 days, they will receive a a CD with a 3 month free subscription (in addition to their original 30 day trial). At the time that that the CD is being shipped, we will check to see if the person was referred. If they were, you will get a credit coupon for $10.
Think about it. If you order 20 trials for other agents, and 5 of those trials do the $10 challenge, you will get 5 – $10 coupons which will give you $50 to use as a credit against your next subscription to Compulife. Credit coupons can be submitted with payment of any new subscription. Coupons are not transferable and will be issued in the name of the referring subscribers; meaning they can only be used by those to whom they are issued. (no ebay sales of coupons!)
The only conditions attached to trials is that the person you are referring to Compulife must be a life insurance agent and must not have been a subscriber to Compulife in the past 3 years or have had a trial in the past 3 years. There is NO LIMIT to the number of names that you can provide, or the Credit coupons that we issue to you.
See what sticks!
Make sure you provide us with your name and address, and make sure the subject line has “30 day free trial” or “Dare to Compare” in it.
We will send the 30 day trial to your referral and a copy of the “Dare to Compare” offer for 3 more months of FREE software. If they take the challenge to get the additional 3 months of software, you get a coupon for $10.
Remember, Compulife has promised that if we can substantially increase volume, we will lower the price you pay for our software. We would like to see our personal use subscription cut from $199 to $149, but we can’t get there if we can’t increase subscriber numbers.
Eliminating CD’s and Mail Costs
Some time in the late summer or early fall we will switch over to permitting you to install your subscription renewal from our web site.
This password protected way of downloading your subscription and monthly update will be available throughout your subscription. If you purchase a new computer, and need to install, you can go back and do it later.
This is a big advantage because subscribers routinely lose their CDs. If that happened, we would need to ship another CD (more money gone). With this new system, if you accidentally delete the e-mail which contained your password, you will be able to call us and with a single click in our database we will instantly ship you a replacement e-mail.
Needless to say, this new internet subscription renewal delivery system will cut our costs in that we will not have to purchase, prepare and mail CD’s. Those cost reductions put us in a position to lower the pricing for software.
One of those changes eliminated the client number 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 tabs on the client entry screen, replacing it with “Primary Insured” and “Secondary Insured (for Multilife)” tabs. Why?
First, the multiple client entry was always designed to work in conjunction with a multi-life quotation. This is a quote where you compare the TOTAL cost for multiple policies on multiple people from the same company. In such cases, some companies will waive policy fees or bulk bank rates, and our system is able to take those cost reductions into account when doing a multi-life quote.
It works pretty simple. Put the first person in as the primary insured, the second person as the secondary insured, run a comparison and select the “multi-life” option from the “options” list on the top of the Display Product Comparison window. Cutting the number of tabs from 5 to 2, and labeling them as we now have, made that much more self explanatory.
IMPORTANT: You must use “MASTER” (or “master”; it is not case sensitive) in order to do system maintenance functions such as updating the software. Any other User ID will turn off certain options such as obtaining monthly or mid-month updates.
Here is a little exercise to explain what I mean:
Start Compulife and when it asks for a User ID, try entering “BARNB” to represent Bob Barney. The first thing the system will do is say: “Select the Name of the User to Use as a Model” and will give you a list of current Users you have saved in the system. The User ID “MASTER” will be already be highlighted and we recommend that you use that as your model. When you select that, Compulife will appear as it does now. The one difference is that you will notice the title of the Red Menu says “Compulife Quotation System BARNB” indicating that you are in that user’s folder.
Go ahead and enter in some client information. My name is Bob Barney and my birthdate is April 2, 1954. I don’t smoke and would be consider in “regular” health. Quote $500,000 of insurance. When you have put that in, and tried running a comparison, close the program.
Start Compulife again and this time enter yourself in as the client. Use the first four letters of your last name, and the first initial of your first name. When it asks you to choose a model, use MASTER. When you have tried a couple of quotes on yourself, exit the program.
Now restart Compulife and enter the User ID “BARNB”. You will find that my information is still in the system, even though you entered yourself as a new client.
How does it keep the USERS separate?
To find out about USERS files (which are actually folders), go to your desktop and double click on “My Computer”. If Compulife is on your C: drive, double click on the C drive. That will display a list of folders on your hard drive. One of those folders should be the “COMPLIFE” folder which contains the Compulife program. Double click on “COMPLIFE”. This will produce a list of files in the “COMPLIFE” folder. The first file is actually a folder called “USERS”. Double click on the “users” folder. At this point you will see the list of users folders, each having a name corresponding to what you entered.
IMPORTANT: User ID was never designed to be a client database. Therefore, if you want a list of users, or want to delete a user or group of users from the users folder, then you need to use “My Computer” and follow the above instructions to list or delete the folders.
VERY IMPORTANT: This is not designed to be a client database. If you are looking for a true database solution, we would remind you that Compulife and GBS, Inc. have created a very useful interface between their client database and our Quotation System. You can learn more about that by going to gbsinc.com.
However, if you simply want to keep some of your more important clients on file, so you don’t have to enter their information into Compulife again, you can use “Multi User Login” to store as many clients as you like.
If you want to turn off the “Multi User Login”, simply exit Compulife, start it again and select the User ID “MASTER”. Go to “options” on the Red Menu and click on “Multi User Login”. You will be tossed out of the program and when you start it again, the User ID will not be requested.
IMPORTANT: The users you entered will still be in the system. Turning off the Multi User Login does nothing more than tell the program to run the “MASTER” user each time you use the program. If you want to retrieve other User IDs, then turn the feature back on.
ALSO IMPORTANT: If you are using Multi User Login, you can have several version of Compulife open at the same time, without having them bump into each other. This is particularly useful for those on networks.
compulife.ca
compulife.us
compulife.cc
For those doing monthly updates by Internet, we rely on three other web sites to supply monthly updates. These are automatically checked and used by our automatic Internet update software.
The disk update will be processed Wednesday, August 31st and the disks will be shipped on that day. You should have the disk update by Friday, September 2nd.
1. Switch to obtaining monthly updates by Internet.
Not only will you eliminate the expense and hassle of returning disks, you will save $100 per year in subscription fees.
To switch to Internet monthly updates, go to our web page www.compulife.com and select the last menu choice “Forms, applications, instruction tutorials, etc.” Under the section “License Agreements” you will need to select and complete a new License Agreement for the type of license you have. After you have printed the new agreement, please read it, especially the part where you agree that you have successfully downloaded and processed our “mid-month updates”. If you haven’t done that before, call us and we’ll be happy to step you through the procedure. It’s easy.
2. Disk Purchase Program
The other way to avoid returning the disks and the disk box each month is to pre-purchase them for $21 per year ($1.75 per month). Once you do that you can keep them for future reference, throw them away or return them for a credit (once each year) when you are invoiced for the following year. $21 costs you less than mailing back disks each month.