Duties and Responsibilities:

SALES AND MARKETING

Provide sales support to advisors and their staff. This includes:

• Generating illustrations

• Conceptual sales support and training on life insurance concepts and products

• Providing marketing materials

• Supporting the proper completion of applications and forms

• Software support – both proprietary and carrier software

• Providing competitive information and competitive positioning for specified products

Identify qualified prospects and initiate outgoing sales calls to these advisors.

• Identifying prospects

• Discussing the Annuity Think Tank/Life Insurance Think Tank value proposition

• Fact finding and discovery with advisors to uncover needs and position ATT/LITT

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Develop and cultivate relationships with advisors, other wholesalers, and key members of distribution partners.

• Providing sales support including: product, technical, conceptual and presentations

• Communication with CMO, recruiters, annuity wholesalers, advisors and their clients

• Effective consultation on case design and concepts for advisors

• Build relationships with key advisors through face-to-face meeting when appropriate

Skills, Knowledge and/or Experience:

• Life insurance license desired

• Experience with IMO/FMO distribution model

• Good knowledge of all distribution channels

• Clear understanding of the Life Insurance industry, life insurance sales process and new business.

• 1-3 years experience with life insurance proposals, underwriting, licensing and/or marketing

• 1-3 years of sales experience and/or sales support experience

• Computer knowledge

• Proven ability to set and achieve goals

• Must be comfortable with leveraging technology

Please contact us today if you are interested – info@annuitythinktank.com

With the creation of this new contributor group, we finally have a way to organize and recognize these kinds of contributions, a clear avenue for feedback and input when it comes to policies around official events, and the opportunity to create even more connections between community organizers through mentorship programs and group projects. I’m especially excited about the creation of this group because until now the role of community organizer, while one of the most important, has not gotten the same recognition as higher-profile contribution methods such as forum support or core code contribution. That is something I hope this group will change, and the local organizers can be recognized for the community leaders they are.*

If you are the organizer of a local WordCamp, WordPress meetup, etc., head over to http://make.wordpress.org/events/ and introduce yourself so we can include you in the fun!

Speaking of meetups, an update on my last post about meetups is long overdue. With around 500 meetup organizers (and/or potential organizers) responding to my last survey, it took much longer than anticipated to review all the responses. We’re working now with meetup.com to issue invitations to join a centralized WordPress Meetup account, so if you filled out the form earlier this year, you should be hearing from them soon. The first wave of existing meetup account transfers (for those who opted in) should happen in the next two weeks, with additional waves every 3 months thereafter (and new groups will be able to be created along the way).

The contributor summit that is being planned for the end of October also generated hundreds of responses/nominations, so that review process is still happening, but we should be announcing some basic plans and issuing invitations soon.

And finally, it would be impossible to talk about in-person WordPress events without mentioning the upcoming annual WordCamp in San Francisco. As the event that represents the worldwide project as a whole, it’s the perfect time to evaluate where we stand as a project and as a community, to help determine where we go next. If you’re a WordPress user, developer, or in any way a part of our vast and interconnected ecosystem, please take a moment to fill in the 2nd annual WordPress survey. It’s just a couple of questions, and your input would be greatly appreciated. The results of the survey will be announced at WSCF, and a report issued shortly thereafter.

Thanks!

* I am also of the firm belief that academic and arts activities should earn varsity letters just like sports teams do — go mathletes! 

Core code isn’t the only way to contribute to the WordPress project. We have an active theme review team, support forum volunteers, people writing documentation, plugin managers, community event organizers, translators, and more. The teams have been siloed for too long, so we’ve recently begun the process of bringing them together by having teams elect representatives to facilitate more communication between the contributor groups. These reps will form the nucleus of the contributor summit now being planned for a long weekend at the end of October in Tybee Island, GA. This is completely different from a WordCamp. It will be a combination of co-working, unconference, and discussions among the project leaders, and participation will be by invitation.

In addition to bringing together the active contributor team reps to work together, I think it’s important to include community members who don’t fall into that category (at least not yet!). Successful WordPress-based business, authors of popular plugins and themes, and people using WordPress in unexpected but intriguing ways should have a place at the table, too. That said, part of the magic of the core team meetup is the small size; it allows every voice not only to be heard, but to engage. Since this is my first attempt at bringing together so many groups and points of view, I want to try and keep it small enough to retain that personal atmosphere while at the same time ensuring that the best possible mix of people and businesses in the WordPress ecosystem is represented. This is where you come in!

Taking a cue from events with limited availability like AdaCamp (attendance) and the jQuery conference (speaker roster), I want you to nominate people and/or WordPress-based businesses to participate in the summit. Yes, you can nominate yourself.* You can nominate up to 10 additional people — be prepared to provide URLs and the reason you think they should participate. You can also nominate up to 10 WordPress-based businesses without naming individual people, so if there’s a theme or hosting company (for example) that you think should be there, you don’t need to go looking for employee names. This nomination process will hopefully ensure that we don’t overlook someone who is making a difference in our community when it comes time to issue invitations.

Nominations will be open for a week, after which the survey will be closed and the process of analyzing the results** will begin. The nominations process will lead to invitations in June, confirmations in July, planning in August and September, and the summit itself in October. Hopefully we can stream and/or record some of the activity to share online at WordPress.tv. Additional invitations may be extended up until the event if there are people/businesses that become more active in the community. If you’re thinking to yourself that maybe now’s the perfect time to start contributing time to the WordPress project, good thinking! In the meantime, if you want to weigh in, fill in the community summit nomination form. Thanks, and wish us luck!

* Nominating yourself: Do nominate yourself if you fall into one of the categories described in the post above, or if you believe that you have a unique point of view. Please do not nominate yourself if you just think it would be cool to hang out with this group. This is a working event, and everyone is expected to bring something special to the table.

** I (and/or a helpful community volunteer) will sift through the nominations and compile a shortlist of the most-nominated people/businesses and the most intriguing underdogs. This list will be reviewed by the summit planning committee (made up of team reps) to create the invitation list.