If you are looking for a quick auto insurance quote online, you will find a multitude of auto insurance companies on the internet offering you exactly what you are looking for.  Such is the speed of internet transactions that some companies can provide you with a full certificate of insurance within 20 minutes of you logging onto their website.

Online auto coverage is exactly the same as what you get offline, and just because it is obtained from the internet doe not make it any the less legal or valid.  If you have to tax your car or get it on the road quickly, then this is the way to go.  However, unless you are clever, it will not provide you with one of the main benefits of using online car insurance engines for your quotations:  the ability to compare the prices of a large number of auto insurers in a relatively short period of time.

Before the internet, getting car insurance quotations was a long and convoluted business. There were three ways to do it:

You could pick up a telephone and ask for a quotation.  There were no free calls then, and this cost you money.  You would patiently answer the representative’s questions until all the information required had been compiled, and then might, if you were lucky, be given a quotation over the phone.  Generally, however, it was sent my mail – snail mail, not email.  ‘Quick’ in these days was within 48 hours.

Alternatively, you could be sent an application form that you would fill in using a black pen (had to be black because blue doesn’t photocopy well).  You would then post the completed form back to the insurance company and wait a few weeks till the quotation was posted back to you.  If you were unlucky it would come back with a note that you had failed to tick a box.

Thirdly, you could physically visit the insurance office after making an appointment, and fill in the form there or have somebody do it for you.  You would then normally be given a quotation after waiting a while for the price to be calculated, or if you were unlucky you would be told it would be posted to you.

Imagine the problems you would have in comparing a dozen different quotations using any of these systems.  Using the internet you can get an automobile insurance policy in 20 minutes, and be able to check out the full insuring agreement before confirming and paying for it.  A quick auto insurance quote online is now old hat, and people have forgotten how difficult it used to be.  However, the best way to use online quotes is to compare the auto insurance rates of a number of providers prior to making a decision.

The insurance rates for private passenger autos vary according the various options that you want.  You might want to insure for more than the state liability minima, or buy some extra such as personal injury protection or comprehensive cover. Each different company has its own rates for these options, so it is important that if you want the cheapest policy you can get, then you should get quotations from a number of companies, providing each with the same information for a true comparison of prices.

Unlike the old days when people had to take the time to prepare auto insurance quotes for you, and manually calculate the cost of each individual component, your quotation is now prepared by the computer itself, quickly and instantly. In these days you paid for the quotation due to the people’s time involved, and you tended not to carry out too many comparisons. Now, however, you can a free car insurance quote online from as many companies as you want in the time it takes to fill in the form (5 minutes top).

You can then compare them all, and either make your choice immediately or chose three or four with which to carry out further negotiations in order to get the price down even further.  However, that all takes time and if it is a genuinely quick auto insurance quote online that you want, then it would still be quick to compare three or four and choose the best from that.  You don’t have to restrict yourself to just the one.

 

(c) Copyright 2008 – Brent A. Kenny.

This extraordinary resource has information on everything from the most important auto insurance terms to practical advice for finding car insurance right policy, how to choose your coverage and important tips for avoiding mistakes when buying car insurance, through to alternative ways of conducting market research.

In this note, I want to share my learning on business plans with you. Because I am involved in Venture Capital and Private Equity, I get a lot of business plans. And going by the number of proposals we reviewed or prepared in the last one year, the global economy is doing great! A lot of individual professionals have opened their own companies, and many companies are looking to grow with global demand for their products/services.

The physical location of people is getting less relevant in many industries. The Internet is playing a role in every business plan, across industries: Software Services, Financial services, Media, Healthcare, Café and Retail chains, etc.

One of the most common questions I see is this: How should my business plan look like?

Well, that depends on what your business aims to do, and who you want to approach for capital. While there is no one answer to it, I want to share a good business plan template that has been used with success. You can download it from the link on this page. http://alphaneuron.com/business-plan-template-development-and-review/

From our business plan reviews, I also see a common mistake many people are making – there is a lot of emphasis on how much money is needed and what kind of sales will happen, etc. But there is insufficient information and analysis on the market in which you want to play and the differentiators with respect to competition, and therefore, what makes you think that you will win the sales that you show in your plan. Also, none or very little information is shared on the systems/processes in place for the business to run if you were to go down for some reason. These are important parts of a business plan. And we hope the template we have shared above will help you. Ideally, 20-25 slides are good for any business plan, including references and supporting data.

So please keep the following in mind if you are going to develop a business plan:

1. The purpose is to convince the investor that your plan is practical and that there is a good chance for success.

2. If you send your plan to every VC and investor around, your effort will be high, and also your rejection rate. Therefore, first connect with prospective VCs and check if they are interested at all in what you are proposing. It is often more productive to send customized mails to 20 VCs than the same mail to 200.

3. Be willing to face a lot of NOs. Be ready to start things small with alternate funding arrangements. If you will start only if VC money is available, then your plan is weak.

4. Show options at key decision points, so that different possibilities are visible. For example, what if the demand turns our to be only 50% of what you planned? Or what if it is 200% of what you planned? What if you go down with illness? What if a large company creates similar product? Identify real-life risks and show options for them. This will be received well because many VCs often start from the business risks.

5. There are many useful inputs available on the blog here that you can use while making your business plan: http://alphaneuron.com

Shankar AVSB is CEO of MyOrbit- Online Business Channel and Director of Alpha Neuron- Better Business Decisions with experience in commercializing new products and has worked with 100+ business directors on real-life challenges.